SS: What emerging trends do you see in the automated material transfer arena?
AF: Two of the main areas driving changes in bulk material transfer systems are health and safety and FDA code-related. From a health and safety perspective, avoiding operator exposure to any hazardous dusts or chemicals has become a very hot topic with OSHA, and breeches can result in significant fines and consequences.
In addition, many airborne dusts also pose significant explosion risks, and all material transfer systems are now required to be assessed with regard to their compliance with NFPA codes and standards. From an FDA compliance perspective, the Food Safety and Modernization Act (FSMA) and Good Manufacturing Practices (GMP) documents list many areas that impact conveyor design and are requiring upgrades or replacements in many food production processes.
SS: What are the biggest challenges when it comes to automating material transfer, and how are these overcome? Can you offer an example?
AF: The flow characteristics of bulk solids is far less predictable than liquids or gases so experience and testing capabilities can be keys to a successful project.
A common issue that has to be overcome in a number of food processing applications is to minimize damage to a fragile finished product while still achieving the required material transfer rates.
A good example of where we have done this would be through the use of tubular drag conveyors in the coffee industry. Roast whole coffee beans are fragile and many methods of conveying, such as pneumatic or screw conveyors, would result in significant degradation of the end product. To avoid this, we have provided a number of Cableflow tubular drag conveyors to key coffee manufacturers, which allows them to gently move the whole roast coffee beans to their packaging lines while minimizing the breakage of the beans.