April 25, 2018

26/04/2018: Grinding and packaging: Technology for easy cleaning and minimal fines

by Andrew Huynh, Sales Engineer, MPE (Modern Processing Equipment Corporation), USA

SaltWorks® is a sea and mineral salt company located in Woodinville, Washington producing a range of specialty salts for wholesale customers, private label, and direct to consumers.
 


They produce custom order salts with varieties like Himalayan pink, red Hawaiian, Mediterranean black, Andres Mountain, Balinese, Mexican, French, and others; and offer grind sizes ranging from extra coarse, to medium, extra fine, and powder. What makes SaltWorks unique is their infrastructure that applies advanced process technologies such as light sorting, specialty grinding and packaging to their gourmet salts.

SaltWorks reached out to MPE because their previous grinder was not doing a great job at grinding to the desired grain size. The yields might contain up to 25 percent fines by weight, which would mean more product was used than necessary to fulfill the order.

While excess fines were still valuable for use in other products, they basically had to be processed a second time, which was not ideal in terms of production efficiency. The company wanted to achieve a significantly lower fines rate and give managers repeatable accuracy as they move from one order to the next, something which other competing grinding technologies could not be relied upon.

Switching between salts also requires cleaning the inside of the grinder to ensure batch purity and integrity. However, cleaning the old grinder was a laborious and time-consuming process. They wanted a grinder that could be wet-washed and corrosion resistant by design for quick transitioning between varieties.

“SaltWorks maintains the highest salt purity standards and the ability to sterilise the grinder without having to hand dry between batches was a huge factor for us moving forward with the MPE Graun-U-Lizer,” says Colin Mclane, Engineering Manager, SaltWorks.

MPE engineers set out on delivering an industrial grinder that would solve all of SaltWorks’ needs.

Solution
MPE built a custom IMD 79 Gran-U-Lizer for SaltWorks (model IMD79) with two roller stages, affording an ideal amount of control and particle size reduction precision. The programmable logic controller (PLC) allows operators to electronically adjust the roll gaps for nimble transitioning between orders of varying grain sizes—with repeatable accuracy. Additionally the IMD79’s 4 rolls are stainless steel and can be quickly wet-washed as part of SaltWorks’ CIP system.


Read the full article, HERE.
 

The Global Miller
This blog is maintained by The Global Miller staff and is supported by the magazine Milling and Grain
which is published by Perendale Publishers Limited.


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