Saving costs in fruit processing The starting situation
The fruit processing plant shown here is one of Britain's most successful, yet, when photographed, there was a great deal of mess and the whole process of handling fruit waste was causing a lot of headaches - and wastig a lot of money. Traditionally fruit waste from juicing machines has been transported to external collection points via conveyor systems, these are now proving to be redundant as a more cost effective and cleaner solution is available.
As one of the UK’s major manufacturers of freshly squeezed fruit juices, the owners were keen to improve their site, in particular for their retailer brands business. So they called in seepex who installed one of their BTM progressive cavity pumps to handle below spec unprocessed fruit, as well as all the peel.
Die Ausgangssituation
Die Unternehmensinhaber waren deshalb stark daran interessiert, die Produktionsanlage zu optimieren. So wandte man sich an seepex, damit eine schlüssige Lösung gefunden wird, um den nicht verarbeiteten Obstausschuss sowie die Schalen zu fördern.
The solution
Specific features of this pump range are the open hopper which allows non flowable product to fall into an auger feed screw which then conveys it into a set of fixed and rotating cutters. Here it is prechopped / macerated prior to entering the pumping elements - the rotor and stator. The pump happily handles waste, such as orange skins, without the addition of any liquid.
With the pump installed, fruit waste now goes straight from the production machinery into the pump, without being handled. The pump then macerates the fruit and peel, which this is then pumped directly out of the building into a skip to await collection. The added advantage of the seepex BTM pump, being able to pre-chop / macerate the waste peel, is that no additional maceration equipment is required when disposing of the product to cattle feed as the particle size produced is ideal for their consumption.
The benefit
The major benefits of this seepex installation are a very satisfied customer in more ways than one no manual handling, no spills and so, no cleaning up at the end of the day. All in all an innovation that saved its own cost well within a year. It also released more than 20 sq. metres of production space replacing an untidy conveyor system.
