Split conveyor system proves ideal for contamination issue

Background

The customer originally purchased an incline screw conveyor as a package system. The pain that the customer was having was that the screw conveyor was taking a very long time to clean between spice changes. The main concern was to convey allergenic and non-allergenic spices and not have the operator exposed as well as contamination on the screw from the allergenic material to the non-allergenic material. The customer needed an application to be easy to clean and not have allergenic and non-allergenic product contamination. The customer stated the major concerns was with the cleaning procedure that they were having to go through between product changes and how even after the cleaning procedures they were not able to completely clean the conveyor. Our completion included other technologies like flexible screw conveyors, tubular cable conveyors, and manual filling.

Solution

The Piab representative with assistance from Piab were able to provide a solution to convey the spices via a vacuum conveyor piFLOW®f with a split system where the operator exposure to allergenic product is minimal and the cleaning process is decreased significantly. The customer stressed a concern with our filters and how they would not be able to clean the filters completely between material changes, this is when Piab came with the solution of providing a split system so that the product will not touch the filter and any carry over will not be introduced into the product stream.

Result

The win happened because we were able to check off all of the items that the customer needed. Once the introduction to the split system was proposed, the customer was on board. The product that is introduced to the product stream is not touching the filter, only residual carry over product gets into the filter module and gets chucked out. When changing product, the customer does not have to clean the filter and has spare filters for the various products, both allergenic and non-allergenic. The portion of the Piab vacuum conveyor that needs to be cleaned is only the pick-up point and the first split module.