Flavors Manufa 

Sugar, Spice, and Sticky Dust

Seed, fruit, root, bark, or any other substance from a plant that is primarily used for flavoring, coloring, or preserving food, is classified as a spice. Spices are available in many forms including fresh, whole dried, or pre-ground dried. Most household spices are ground into a powder.

Some form of herbs and spices are used every day; from ice cream to bread. Today, the average person has roughly 40 spices in their kitchen cabinets. The scents and flavors of herbs and spices come from the essential oils in the plant’s material. These oils are made up of organic compounds that are preserved during growth, harvest, and drying.

The customer had a baghouse that, depending on the production schedule, was collecting dust from up to 100 different flavors and spices a day. The dusts collected ranged from non-sticky to sticky and from dry to humid dust. Although baghouses are typically designed to handle heavy loading at the inlet, their collector was having issues with being blinded since sticky and moist dust were occasionally being collected.

Challenge

The customer was looking for a unit that would not be easily blinded by sticky dusts and one that could handle sticky and humid dusts. Additionally, they needed something that could collect from a range of processes including mixing tanks, blenders, and dumping stations. AAF needed to account for the inlet loading of the new system when providing equipment sizing, since baghouses are typically able to handle high inlet loading.

Solution

AAF replaced the customer’s dry baghouse collector with a RotoClone® W wet fan collector. This unit is able to run during wash-down processes, helping remove any nuisance dust that is generated. Since water is the collecting medium, there aren’t any bags in the unit, solving the issue of bag blinding. The RotoClone® W’s construction allowed easy clean-out and minimized ledges inside the unit where bacteria could grow.

Benefits

Bag blinding was eliminated by the installed of the RotoClone® W, allowing for efficient dust collection. The Food Quality construction of the unit allows for an easier clean-out, requiring less time than the previously installed baghouse. This increase in time saved allows the customer to spend less time on maintenance, and more time focusing on its processes.