Manufacturers of sports supplements and powders often have a requirement for high-speed sifting devices to ensure raw materials used during production are free of contaminants or remnants of packing materials before production.
The Powder Sifting Challenge
A sports protein powder manufacturer required high-speed security sifting device for all their raw materials entering a large 350 cubic ft rotary batch blender.
They needed a blending capacity of up to 30,000 pounds per hour, and because of recent changes in legislation, the FSA (Food Safety Act) required them to sift raw ingredients through a 10-mesh sieve.
The manufacturer’s first research led them towards using a standard centrifugal sifter but they immediately faced several issues.
The nylon screens used on the centrifugal sifter were highly vulnerable to breakage. They also experienced a high level of waste of good material that was rejected due to agglomerations.
Lastly, the larger dimensions of the centrifugal sifter prevented its installation in the allowable space constraints within their production facility.
The Quadro solutions for effective sifting solution
Quadro installed a FlexSift into the manufacturer’s facility on a trial basis, for evaluation. This enabled the manufacturer to test a variety of ingredients and to make sure the FlexSift had the ability to break up agglomerated material and also capture extraneous tramp material.
The FlexSift worked as promised and captured the extraneous materials (including twist ties, plastic bag and liner materials, wood fragments, hair, and paper). The manufacturer’s workflow was also greatly improved using the FlexSift in a gravity feed stack as a normally experienced bottleneck was eliminated.
The Results
Their mixer could now be filled in a fifth of the time and as a result, an entire shift was eliminated.
Savings of $10,000 annually were realized by eliminating the waste of agglomerated good material. In addition, the manufacturer saw no more costly recalls of contaminated products.
