Detailed view of bread line and bun line material handling system with the following items: 1 Indoor storage silos for minor ingredients, 2 Flour silos & storage system, 3 Vacuum pumps, 4 Dehumidification system, 5 Inline rotary sifter, 6 Small bag tipping station for minor ingredients, 7 Weighing hopper on mixer
A state-of-art material handling system was required to increase the capacity of an operating bread line and bun line plant. Several major challenging constraints for the project included: Installation in confined spaces within the existing plant Integration into existing material handling systems was needed No disruption was to occur to the existing production system Engineering and equipment was to continuously operate (24×7) The increase in plant production capacity required the addition of a flour silo. A new 50-tonne capacity silo was installed next to two existing 30-tonne silos. The new and old silo systems were then integrated to reduce the investment costs. This complex project required all our expertise and experience. The new material handling system was installed on budget, on time and without causing downtime to the existing operational plant systems.
Flour is transferred from silos by negative pneumatic conveying (vacuum) into the plant. There it is weighed at weighing hoppers located on top of mixers. Minor ingredients, such as sugar, salt and gluten, need to be mixed with the flour. These come to the plant in 25kg bags and are manually bag-tipped and stored in four separate indoor storage silos within the plant.
Recipes are preprogrammed in a customised Scada Control System. This allows each minor ingredient to be centrally weighed by a high precision micro dossier. The combined weight is then transferred to the minor ingredient weighing hopper on top of the mixer. This weight is checked against a preset fine tolerance. When tolerance is not met the Scada System requires high level production personnel to determine whether to accept or reject a combined minor ingredient dose.
An integrated dehumidification system supplies dry cool air for the pneumatic conveying of the minor ingredients. The system also provides air conditioning for the indoor storage silos and weighing hoppers.
The systems and components used in the material handling system for the bread line and bun line system are as follows:
- Small bag tipping station
- Dehumidification system
- Flour silo and storage system
- Inline rotary sifter
- Material handling system for flour
- Vacuum pumps
- Material handling system for flour and minor ingredients
