A major supplier of prepared vegetables to the UK food industry has recently taken delivery of another EZstrip cake pump from NOV Mono. Measham-based AB Produce trialled an EZstrip cake pump before installing its first unit a year ago, and the latest pump is the third that the company has ordered.
AB Produce supplies a wide range of potatoes and prepared vegetable to customers in the food wholesale, retail, catering and processing sectors. The company had previously used a system of screw augers, steel collection bins, macerators and pumps to collect and process vegetable peelings before transferring them on to an on-site treatment plant. However we were having problems with this, comments AB Produce spokesman Carl Woolrich. The physical location of the system, only a little way off the floor, meant that there was very little head of waste forcing its way into the macerators. The system was basically relying on the original pumps below to draw the waste slurry down into the macerators and this was resulting in blockages
When we began looking for an alternative solution, we realized that the Mono EZstrip cake pump offered some very attractive advantages. Mono could provide the pump with a modified inlet blending flange and auger which helps convey the vegetable waste product into the pump. This greatly increased the flow of slurry through the macerators and into the pump. The first unit we tested performed extremely well and had a capacity of 4-5m3/h. It allowed us to replace the previous auger, bin and pump combination with a single, compact alternative. The Mono pumps operate very well indeed and we've been happy to order more to help eliminate the problems that we had previously.
The Mono EZstrip cake pump has been designed specifically to provide outstanding performance whilst also simplifying and speeding up the maintenance process. It features a specially designed feed chamber which can be easily disconnected to provide access to the rotor and screw conveyor assembly. The rotor can then be separated from the conveyor, allowing removal of the rotor and stator while in-situ, with no need to disconnect any of the suction or delivery pipe work. This dramatically reduces the time required for maintenance work and ensures maximum availability.
The EZstrip cake pump is ideally suited to a wide range of duties, including the transfer of thickened sludge cake (with up to 40% dry solids content) plus sludge blending, dewatered sludge handling and lime slurry dosing. Each of the pumps supplied to AB Produce features a widethroat hopper and a modified inlet blending flange, to ensure efficient collection and pumping of the vegetable slurry at a rate of 4-5m3/h.
