Gentle Handling of Sticky Dough
Biscomerica, a large California bakery was concerned about the safety and efficiency of a process in the manufacture of one of their cookie varieties.
The starting situation
Following the mixing of ingredients in a mixer, the dough would be transferred via manual labor into a large nearby hopper. This full hopper would then be hoisted to a level of about 3 - 4.5m where the dough would be gravity fed into the forming machine. Not only was it labor intensive, but also the heavy, dough-laden hopper being continuously raised to considerable heights was a safety hazard. A solution could be a pump placed on the ground nearby the forming machine.
They had previously considered lobe pumps, which they were already using for their fruit fillings. But, they were concerned about change in dough consistency and resultant possibility of change in product quality. The taste, transportability, and consistency of the product may not be affected.
The solution
Biscomerica personnel had recently visited an food exhibition, at which time they had seen a progressive cavity pump in the seepex, Inc. booth. Following the show, Biscomerica management called on seepex engineers and described their problem.
seepex recommended a sanitary open hopper BTCS range pump. seepex was so confident that its low-shear pump would not damage the dough that it guaranteed the pump to perform to Biscomerica's satisfaction or it would accept the pump for return and grant full credit. After satisfied tests the pump performed as promised and Biscomerica ordered two pumps of the next larger size.
The benefit
Now, the dough is pumped directly from the mixer to the forming machine. Not only is the process entirely safe and sanitary, but much less personnel supervision is required for the process. In fact, the seepex pumps were so successful in meeting and surpassing management's expectations that they plan to purchase two additional pumps for other product lines.
