Food Waste Pumps - EDDY Pump

In the food industry, managing waste is an important step to ensuring stable production rates. Pumps play a huge role in managing multiple types of waste, making it essential to choose the best pumps for pumping food and animal waste and byproducts. For food waste, a pump is needed that can reliably pump tough solids and not be prone to clogging which could only lead to downtime and loss of production. Due to the high chance of clogging occuring, centrifugal pumps, which are great for moving clear water, are not typically suited for the heavy duty demands of pumping solids.

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Centrifugal pumps exhibit critical tolerances between the impeller and pump casing, which makes it very hard to pass large solids without damaging or clogging the pump impeller. The EDDY Pump does not have an impeller, but instead a geometrically designed spinning rotor that creates an eddy current. Based on this design a higher suction is created without being restricted by critical tolerances other pumps are forced to abide by. This design allows the EDDY slurry Pump to easily handle material once deemed impossible or too cost prohibitive.

The meat and poultry processing industries produce a significant amount of waste, most commonly in the form of animal offal, wastewater, and chemical byproducts. Pumping tough solid waste like what’s found in the meat and poultry industry is difficult and causes problems for many different types of pumps. These solids can clog pumps and create other problems in production. A macerator or chopper attachment can help to reduce the size of food solids before they even enter the pumping system. Additional grinders, set up in a sequence, are often the route taken to fully treat the liquid before disposal. This ensures the waste complies with the local regulations in regards to organic waste handling.

The offshore and fishing industry has a significant need for efficient ways to transport and unload large quantities of fish waste. Fish waste is a highly viscous slurry of fish parts, scales, guts, and bones which requires a high solids handling pump to consistently unload without issues. Along with being viscous, the slurry is also highly abrasive, containing a large volume of solids which can quickly wear down the internal components of low tolerance pumps, making the EDDY Pump an optimal choice for replacing existing fish waste pumps. The EDDY Pumps open rotor design with high tolerances allow anything that will go into the suction end is passed through the discharge without issues. This allows pumping of a significant amount of solids and debris that will pass through without clogging the pump. The superior EDDY Pump patented design translates to significant maintenance cost reductions and the ability of the EDDY Pump to exceed other pumps in handling all aspects of fish waste.

Vegetable processing, especially with potatoes and tomatoes, has an increasing need for reliable solids handling pumps that are capable of pumping starchy, thick slurries with a percentage of solids. Vegetable waste often includes seeds, skins, pulp and other fibrous material that can cause significant problems in pumps in the form of clogging and quickly wearing down pump parts. When these issues start to happen regularly to the installed pumps, significant downtime is likely and it’s a position no company wants to find themselves in. Therefore, investing in the right kind of pump from the onset will eliminate this problem from occurring, saving your countless hours of production time. This waste needs to be removed and disposed of quickly, efficiently, and in a cost-effective way.

As the sugar juice process is high in water solution, the current method of fluid transfer using centrifugal pumps seems to be satisfactory. However, some of the by-products produced in the sugar manufacturing process may be suited to transfer using an aggressive and particle tolerant means of pumping such as the EDDY Pump line of slurry and process pumps.

Mill mud and fly ash are two sugar production byproducts that are well suited as an EDDY Pump application. Additionally, the transfer of molasses concentrate and when combined with cattle feed may also provide ideal applications for the use of the EDDY Pump.

Additional sugar processing pump applications may be realized when loading and unloading bulk sugar to the holds of ocean vessels. The common practice is to use a feeder pump drawing sugar crystals from an inclined conveyor directing the feed to those parts of the ship’s hold as required. However, many importing countries (often third world economies) still use a clamshell bucket on a jib crane boom to unload. This method of unloading, while not in any way universal, is quite slow and laborious and prone to product losses resulting from poor loading/unloading practices.

The adjustable size, extremely recessed rotor can pass the largest sized solids in the industry. In harsh conditions with sand, sludge, rocks, slurry, traditional pumps clog, wear and fail more often. This leads to unwanted downtime for repairs and maintenance, ultimately hurting your bottom line. Not the case with the EDDY Pump, since we have the tolerance to pump objects up to 12 inches!

You can be confident you will be rewarded with less clogging, lower maintenance costs, more uptime leading to higher production using the EDDY Pump. Call us to match the right sized pump to your job.

View our line of non-clog slurry pumps here.

Background

Innovative recipes and high-quality products are essential in the food industry. 

SEEPEX’s partnership with Natures Way Foods began back in as we supported the company on its journey to becoming one of the UK’s leading manufacturers of fresh convenience food. 

The preparation of fresh, convenience food – including ready-to-eat fruit and salad products for major supermarkets – generated waste that had to be removed from high-care production areas in an automated enclosed hygienic system. 

Since initially supplying just a single progressive cavity (PC) pump, SEEPEX has gone on to provide this fresh convenience food processor with further customized pumping, macerating and chopping solutions. 

For more information, please visit SVL.

Task and Target

The food processor, Natures Way Foods, formerly used two methods for handling their waste which turned out to be inefficient.

The first was a combination of a progressive cavity pump with an open hopper and a low-speed twin-shaft grinder to chop the waste. This caused process delays and downtimes. Production was intermittent since the waste not being removed due to bridging above the grinder and backing up in the hopper.

The second method involved the manual handling of waste – using tote bins – from a high-care production area to a low-risk area located outside. This is labour-intensive not only in terms of manual movement but also requires dedicated cleaning of the tote bins prior to re-entering the high-care area to prevent potential cross-contamination. The waste handled included pineapple skins, melon, grape vines and mango stones, the latter being particularly challenging due to the size of the stones at 4-7 cm in length. The ability to handle the stones and optimize the design was verified on the basis of in-house tests using product supplied by the customer.

KEY FACTS

• Pump range BTM
• Handling fruit stones, e.g., mango stone (4-7 cm long)
• Variety of fruit and vegetable waste
• Pumping distance in excess of 100m

Solution

SEEPEX designed, installed and commissioned two customized integrated pumping and macerating systems to resolve their existing waste handling issues and to pump the waste over 100m from a high-care production facility to a low-risk disposal area. 

To address the bridging and backing-up problems, a new single multi-purpose system was supplied which included two pumps with customized open hoppers and auger feed screws with integrated cutting blades to chop the waste prior to being pumped. 

To overcome the challenge of the mango stones, a small reception hopper with an auger feed screw was designed to receive varied waste tipped by the tote bins. This was then conveyed into a macerating unit which reduced the particle size before being discharged into an open hopper pump, eliminating the need for manual handling between high-care and low-risk areas and avoiding cross-contamination and associated cleaning costs. Pump operation was automated using a control system linked to reception hopper level. Additional safety features included dry running and protection against overpressure. 

KEY SPECIFICATIONS

• Chop and pump in a single unit
• Customized hopper, auger and maceration equipment

Results

The automated waste handling solutions from SEEPEX have enabled Natures Way Foods to hygienically, safely and cost-effectively dispose of its waste at both its vegetable and fruit factory and its coleslaw and potato salad processing factory.

These solutions streamlined waste handling at both sites, eliminating the intermittent production and manual handling, and reducing health and safety risks to operatives from slipping due to spillages.

The product was pumped through pipework enabling the hygienic transfer of waste, regardless of particle size, from high-care to low-risk areas. This reduced the risk of cross-contamination and compliance failure caused by any new product becoming contaminated with the old.

The integrated maceration and pumping system also produces a lower volume of waste for disposal while preserving the highest residual value of by-products, e.g., for biogas production.

“When we began developing our new Drayton manufacturing unit, to handle the coleslaw and potato salad arm of our business, we needed a reliable partner to engineer a customized automated waste handling system, capable of processing both organic and non-organic waste streams. SEEPEX’s solution has delivered on its promises to reduce costs, reduce labour, keep our manufacturing area clean, tidy and compliant, and keep our operatives safe.”
Andy Mays, Engineering Manager, Natures Way Foods

BENEFITS

For more information, please visit Waste Transfer Pump.