Feeding of a filling machine by pneumatic conveying in dense phase for brown sugar, cane sugar and white sugar

Processed powders: refined white sugar and brown sugar 

Packing of white, organic and brown sugar

Leader in Africa and the Mediterranean Basin in the sugar industry and vegetable oil industry.

The customer has two storage silos that contain white sugar and brown sugar. His objective is to be able to simultaneously feed its four filling machines, which have a capacity of 3 tons per hour.
The packing lines package either white sugar or brown sugar. A line purge system prevents cross-contamination.
All equipment must be designed to operate in ATEX 21.

Processing of refined white sugar
Palamatic Process has integrated a buffer hopper under the white sugar silo, made up of a level probe and a hopper jet air filter, whose objective is to optimize the system's capacity and compressed air consumption. The sugar is conveyed through a dense phase pressure conveying airlock called MAXFLO® - with a capacity of 12 tons per hour - and a multi-way rotary switch to feed the four buffer hoppers. These hoppers have a capacity of 1,500 litres (half an hour's autonomy) and are positioned above the packing lines. They are connected to a common centralized dust collector that recovers the fines.

Processing of brown sugar
Raw sugar has lower flow capacities than white sugar. This is why Palamatic Process has installed a flat-bottomed anti-bridging device under the storage silo, equipped with a manually operated slide valve, to feed the buffer hopper and MaxFlo® conveying airlock. The MaxFlo® airlock is gravity fed through the specific Inflatex® valve, allowing the bulk material flow to be cut off at the end of filling and sealed by its inflatable sealing valve (valve seat). This valve design allows a differential pressure of 7 bar. The airlock feed hopper must be equipped with a low level sensor that authorizes the valve to be opened in the presence of bulk materials.

Fine processing
The industrial dust collector common to all four bag conditioners is provided with a non-return valve to prevent the explosion from spreading through the ducts. It is positioned in the dust flow just upstream of the filter. In the event of a flashback, the valve closes by the pressure effect and isolates the box to channel the explosion into the discharge duct. Its filtering surface has a surface area of 30 m² and a flow rate of 2,400 m³/h. The fines are then conveyed, by means of a conveying screw positioned outside the worksite, to a big bag filling station. This enables the customer to reuse all collected fines.

A Siemens S7 PLC is located in a safe area.