Baking & Snack - May 2019 - 94

INGREDIENT HANDLING

Control
screening and
fractioning

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Screening
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When setting up automated ingredient handling, placement of the silo is key. "It's hard to fit a truck through a
parking lot and around the building, things like that,"
said Darren Adams, vice-president, engineering, Fred D.
Pfening Co. Placing the silo near where the truck enters and
exits the property will shave off time just by simplifying the
first and last steps. "It's ideal to have the silo where you can
get to it so there's a shorter run to load into; the shorter the
tubing run, the faster it can go."
To ensure proper silo placement and installation, KB
Systems offers project management services for all projects,
including a certified onsite installation supervisor for its
outdoor silo setup.
It's not just about the distance from the truck to the silo;
it's also about the distance from the silo to the process. An
automated ingredient handling system is often part of a
master plan that accounts for growth, and these space issues should be considered. "But if you don't have that, it's a
challenge to find the proper space," said Stephen Marquardt,
director, food processing plants, Zeppelin Systems USA.
"You want to be closer to the process when it goes from the
silo into the bakery. The truck can be right there with the
silo, but if that is far away from the rest of the line, you have
a long way to convey, and you need a lot of filter area."
The same challenges exist when receiving via rail car.
"Sometimes a bakery will run into a situation where the
most convenient location for the rail side - or the silos -
don't marry well together. It's important for bakers to keep
this in mind so they don't start down a design path where
they end up having to redesign or, worse, have to live with
a less than optimal setup," Mr. Stricker said. To head off
these kinds of risks, Shick Esteve works closely with bakers
to look at traffic patterns, return radius and other factors to
ensure maximized unloading efficiency.
Achieving the highest efficiency is about not only time
but also energy. "We take everything out of the system layout, and we do a calculation by it," Mr. Gasser said. "You
can achieve the desired capacity however long the run is,
but it might need more energy. Longer systems need more
energy than shorter, simpler systems. It doesn't really slow
things down if the calculation is done correctly, but it could
be running on higher energy."

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In addition to the real-estate rule of location, a basic geometrical rule applies: The shortest route between two points
is a straight line. Turns and elbows matter, and they add up.
"Each linear foot of tube is a pressure loss, and each bend
or elbow is a loss," Mr. Adams explained. In most cases,
Pfening limits the line's overall distance to no more than
60 to 80 ft, and that includes four to six elbows. "There have
been times where we've had to design the system with hundreds of feet, which obviously limits the flow rate and effi-

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Baking & Snack - May 2019

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