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New Practice Of Smart Agriculture In The Netherlands: Airless Transportation Helps Agricultural Products Flow Smoothly And Doubles Profits

As the food market shifts from larger bags to individual portions, packaging in the food processing industry needs to become more flexible. To meet these demands, advanced packaging machines are needed to handle different materials, sizes, speeds, and reject rates. However, reducing packaging size also requires adjustments to other aspects of the processing technology to maintain efficient production levels.

Therefore, it is crucial for food processors, especially those producing high-value snacks, to invest in adaptable transfer systems to ensure gentle and sanitary movement of specific amounts throughout the production process.

When handling valuable, susceptible products like nuts, chips, and small or individual-sized packages of coffee, cereal, and dry pet food, material breakage and loss can lead to major financial setbacks. Even a small difference of 1% in waste can result in a loss rather than a profit. To prevent this issue, packagers, and processors should avoid using conveyors that may put fragile materials through stressful conditions during transport, compromising their integrity.

A solution to this problem is using high-velocity air power through tubes, bends, or sweeps to convey delicate, high-value products before dumping them into bins or containers. This method is being considered by many packagers to better handle fragile items while still meeting high throughput requirements.

The Limitations of Air Conveyors
When considering conveying fragile, high-dollar value food products at high speeds using pneumatic and aeromechanical systems, food packagers and processors need to understand the risks of excess breakage. The two main types of pneumatic conveyors – dilute phase and dense phase – operate at different speeds and pressures, and both require regular filter replacement.

While dilute phase conveying involves suspending the product in air and transporting it at extremely high velocities, dense phase conveying operates at lower speeds and is better suited for heavier or abrasive products. However, both systems can still cause breakage at bends and sweeps. Similarly, aeromechanical conveyors, which use wire rope and discs to carry the product, can also cause damage to delicate materials.

Any delicate food product conveyed at high speeds is at risk of breakage during directional changes or impacts, making it crucial to carefully consider the best conveying method for each product.

A Gentler Approach Boosts Profitability
One option to protect sensitive, high-value packaged food is to use tubular cable conveyors, which utilize a coated, flexible stainless-steel drag cable and solid circular discs to move products through a sealed tube at low speeds. This method reduces product damage to just 1-2%, making it a beneficial choice for food industry manufacturers. Additionally, these conveyors can handle a variety of products and layouts, making them versatile and efficient.

Furthermore, the modular construction of tubular cable conveyors allows for easier and safer product transfer, especially compared to air-powered conveying systems. For packaging lines, these conveyors can also be easily modified, providing further flexibility and cost savings. Overall, the compact and customizable design of tubular cable conveyors make them a valuable asset for food manufacturers.

Less Energy Use, Less Noise
When used in food packaging and process lines, pneumatic conveying systems typically require larger motors that consume a considerable amount of power to run fans, blowers, and rotary valves. Additionally, a dense phase system that relies on compressed air in a pressure tank also consumes significant power. Pneumatic systems also generate a lot of noise, as do aeromechanical systems due to their high-speed operation.

On the other hand, tubular cable systems, which use smaller motors, are much quieter overall and consume significantly less energy. A low-speed tubular cable system produces minimal noise and can even allow for conversation while in operation. Furthermore, in terms of energy consumption, tubular cable systems only use about one-tenth of what pneumatic systems do. This can result in substantial electricity savings, with some dense phase models experiencing a one-year return on investment.

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