There is waste in almost every production area. This is also the case with the production of bread. In large bakeries and supermarkets there are tons of bread every day that have to be sorted out for various reasons. However, this waste contains many valuable raw materials and is far too good “for the bin.”
Excess bread is a valuable raw material for the feed industry
Some companies have therefore specialized in buying this excess bread as a raw material for their own product and are processing it. To do this, it is crushed, sieved and dried in several process steps. The end product serves as an important basis for high-quality cattle feed. A German bread processing plant had a problem with oversized grain that clogged the sieves and had required removal. These three to four tons of oversized grain were placed in a mobile shredding machine, but this solution was not ideal because plenty of waste was incurred.
RedUnit XRL186-520QD: the hardened ripper rotors also effortlessly shred metal parts.
Alternative solution to reduce the waste in bread processing plant
Awila, a company based in Lastrup, Germany, supplies complete solutions for these companies. They searched for an alternative solution to reduce the waste in the German bread processing plant. A previously tested hammer mill was not efficient enough because first tests showed that the bread deliveries often contain metal parts such as knives, dough scrapers and whole baking trays. During their search, they came together with Vogelsang and quickly decided on the RedUnit. Vogelsang has a number of rental machines for test purposes, so that the customer can extensively test the machine in its system first before it decides to buy the new product. The RedUnit XRL186-520QD as a system solution was selected for the test in the bread processing plant. The first test on-site showed that even the pieces of metal parts were not a problem for the hardened ripper rotors of the RedUnit. With the right granulation, these foreign bodies can be removed without residue in a subsequent step, as required by the applicable feed regulations. After installing the RedUnit in the customer’s system and making individual settings tailored to the production process, it performs reliably and thus helps the customer to eliminate oversized grain. In addition, it shreds the material into optimal granulation for the subsequent processes. It is even possible to increase the throughput. After a few days of testing, it became clear that the RedUnit was the ideal solution for this application and that the rental system could be dismantled. However, the customer never wanted to be without the new product one more day and bought the built-in RedUnit immediately.
Control-unit of the RedUnit
On the way to Industry 4.0: Platform-independent control unit of the RedUnit
Vogelsang has equipped the RedUnit with an intelligent control unit. This means that the complete system can be easily integrated into any plant using the plug & play principle. This simplifies commissioning on-site. As soon as the user connects the RedUnit to the power, the modules automatically communicate via the platform-independent standard protocol OPC UA. All components and their technical values can be viewed on a touchscreen.
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