Mixing, Drying & Cooling

Feeding, Conveying and Extrusion in Confectionery and Chocolate Manufacture

Application Notes & Case Studies /

Coperion K-Tron’s highly accurate feeders and pneumatic conveying systems are used for transfer, weighing and feeding to batch cookers and/or mixers. In addition, Coperion provides food components that fulfill highest demands in hygiene, ease of cleaning and gentle product handling. This equipment, in combination with Coperion’s high efficiency twin screw extruders, is used for the production of a variety of products including caramel and chocolate, licorice and various filled candies. Innovations in both material handling and extrusion for confectionery manufacture are an integral part of the overall Coperion systems solution.

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Major Ingredient Transfer and Weighing for Snack Food Processing

Application Notes & Case Studies /

The manufacture of baked snack foods generally requires various ingredients to be transferred to mixing and extrusion processes. Depending on the percentage of each ingredient in the blend, materials are usually categorized as majors, minors and micros. In many cases, the transfer and weighing of these majors, minors, and micros can be a manual and tedious process. When increased production demand and lack of overall process efficiency caused a manufacturer of baked snack foods to switch from a manual to a more automated process, they approached the Coperion K-Tron Process Group for help.

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Feeding and Conveying of Ingredients to Continuous Mixers for Food Applications

Application Notes & Case Studies /

In order to produce consistent blend uniformity in short residence times, the use of high accuracy Coperion K-Tron loss-in-weigh feeders is imperative. In addition, the use of Coperion K-Tron pneumatic receivers as refill devices ensure quick and efficient refill cycles to maximize process quality. Typical applications for the continuous mixing process include but are not limited to the following: Infant Formulas, Powdered Drink Mixes and Bases, Nutritional Protein Blends, Soup Mixes, Bakery Mixes & Pet Food Mixes.

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Portable Vertical Mixer for Plastic Regrind and Plastic Pellets

Application Notes & Case Studies /

This 65.5 ft3 Whirlwind mixer is designed with casters and fork pockets to be portable. The customer has multiple processing locations that does not allow for permanent equipment. The portable design provides flexibility when loading, mixing and unloading at a specific processing station. The mixer has two discharge methods, a 3” vacuum probe connection and a 6” Gaylord drain tube with manual slide gate. The equipment does not need air and the customer provided the power cord for connection to the control panel.

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Exterior Coatings Producer Blends Abrasives With No Shaft Seal Wear

Application Notes & Case Studies /

When blending the coatings, ingredients are added to the 100 cu ft (2.8 cu m) ribbon blender in several steps. First, liquid acrylic polymer and water are metered by a pumping system. While the blender is running, 50 lb (23 kg) bags of pigments and fillers, together with various pre-weighed chemicals, are manually dumped into the blender. Next, pre-weighed aggregates are added from self-dumping hoppers using a forklift. Typically, the blend contains about 25% liquids and 75% solids.

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Plastic Pellet Manufacturer Eliminates Blend Problems with Rotary Blender

Application Notes & Case Studies /

The Munson Rotary Batch Blender is unlike other blenders in that the vessel is smoothly rotating on massive trunnions at the inlet and discharge end of the machine. Unmatched mixing is achieved with the proprietary mixing flights which gently tumble and fold materials in a omnidirectional pattern. The tumbling action creates an ideal cascading bed of material for liquid spray applications.

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Powdered Drink Mix Blending and Packaging System

Application Notes & Case Studies /

A customer was building a new facility that had a room dedicated for use in their powder blending process. They contacted NBE to help develop a solution that will meet their process needs and fit inside the space they have available. The system needed to handle raw ingredients from supersacks as well as small bags. Recipes were based on even numbers of the raw material packages. All of the material must be discharged, screened to prevent any contaminants, and discharged into a horizontal ribbon blender. Attention must be paid to ergonomic handling of the materials, including the scissor lift for bag positioning, along with disposal of the empty packaging from the upper levels of the system. The finished blends were packaged in super sacks that will ultimately be used to supply their packaging line. NBE designed and manufactured a custom three-level platform to support all of the equipment in the available space. NBE coordinated with the customer’s dust collection vendor once the system was assembled in our facility. The vendor came and installed the vent lines under the platform structure in our facility. The customer visited for a final inspection of the completed system assembly prior to shipment and was very pleased with the finished product.

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Spice Maker Adds Paddle Mixer to Quadruple Production

Application Notes & Case Studies /

A typical batch consists of 10 to 12 ingredients, including liquid additions. The ingredients, mostly spices and salt, are received in 50 lb (22.7 kg) bags or boxes, which are moved by forklift onto a mezzanine and manually loaded into the mixer below. When a batch is completed it is discharged into 1,500 lb (680 kg) bulk bags, from which the product is packaged in 50 lb (22.7 kg) or 75 lb (34 kg) boxes, or 125 lb (56.7 kg) drums.

Formerly, packaging was a manual operation in which each bag was lifted by a hoist and emptied into the packages. In the new system, each bag is moved by forklift to a bulk-bag discharger, from which it is emptied into a hopper that serves two packaging lines via vibratory feed troughs. Each trough feeds product directly into a package that is set on a scale, and the flow is automatically controlled by a gain-in-weight system.

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