Experience

Bulk Ingredient Handling

CDSL has extensive experience with bulk ingredient handling including rail car to facility transfers, truck to facility transfers and supersack to production transfers. These bulk ingredient handling systems are custom designed to fit the customer's specific needs. They can be standalone or fully integrated into new or existing line controls.

The customer requested a new flour delivery system that would convey flour from rail cars to new bulk house storage bins. From there the flour would be delivered to process lines throughout the customer's facility. To accomplish our customer's goals, we divided the delivery system into three separate segments. The rail to bulk house transfer, the new bulk house bins, and process delivery. As this facility already had a dedicated controller for rail to bulk house transfers, we were able to integrate the new flour delivery equipment into their existing control system with custom PLC logic and updated HMI screens. The process delivery portion was handled in a similar manner, as all the process batching systems were already in place and making calls for ingredients to the bulk house. The final segment to be completed was the bulk house bins along with their associated equipment. This segment required a new control system that would function safely in a Class II/Division 1 area where combustible dusts exist under normal everyday operating conditions. A new control panel with galvanic isolation was designed for this area. This new control panel not only controlled the bulk storage bins and their associated equipment in a hazardous area, but also interfaced with the rail delivery and process delivery systems.

Safety and cost savings are both great, and they do not have to be mutually exclusive. Separating the new equipment in the Class II/Division 1 area from the rest of the systems accomplished three things. First, it allowed us to provide focused safe control of the bulk house equipment. Second, it eliminated additional costs by utilizing the existing controllers and network structure to control all the associated equipment outside of the bulk house. Finally, Integrating the new equipment in this manner provided a familiar look and control scheme for the end user with minimal PLC logic and HMI screen updates.