Blasting open the bottleneck
A food products manufacturer uses air cannons to improve sugar flow from a silo.
Anyone who has opened a sugar bowl and found a solid lump instead of granules will understand a problem at Lipton Monarch's Belleville, Ontario, plant. A division of Unilever-Bestfoods, Lipton Monarch produces a range of ingredients and products -- including powdered drink mixes -- for Canadian restaurants, bakeries, and food processors. A key ingredient in the powdered drink mixes is granulated sugar. Since the plant opened in 1992, sugar sticking to the inside of a silo on the powdered drink mix processing line has caused expensive downtime, cleaning, and reprocessing.