The customer approached Pump & Valve with a primary requirement for pumping thick viscous golden syrup from a hopper to a filling machine and also the flexibility to pump to another part of the plant 50-60m away when required. Duty flow 11m³/h and the CIP flow jumped to 20m³/h. Head pressure was 6-8 bar.
Pumping Golden Syrup With A Twin Screw Pump
A large sugar refinery.
The customer approached Pump & Valve with a primary requirement for pumping thick viscous golden syrup from a hopper to a filling machine and also the flexibility to pump to another part of the plant 50-60m away when required. Duty flow 11m³/h and the CIP flow jumped to 20m³/h. Head pressure was 6-8 bar.
Engineers on site were concerned that exactly the right pump was used and they had some very specific requirements:
- They wanted a pump that that didn’t require constant maintenance. For this reason Lobe pumps were not considered.
- There were concerns that the mechanical seals would not last due to the viscosity and sticky nature of the sugar that would literally glue the seal faces together.
- There was a chance that the pump could dry run.
- The pump and seals needed to be able to deal with the crystals that invariably come in sugar syrup.
- Gear pumps and progressive cavity pumps were not to be considered as they are not strictly hygienic and cannot run dry.
Pump & Valve supplied a Bornemann Twin Screw pump. These pumps are often used for pumping liquid sugar and this application was ideal. The customer now has a low maintenance, fully hygienic pump that can transfer the syrup at 8 bar with capacity to spare. It is very gentle on the product and provides a consistent “non-pulsing” flow and there have been no mechanical seal issues.
This pump can also have the speed increased to 20m³/h for the CIP flow and no additional equipment (CIP pumps, valves, bypass lines etc) is required.
Feedback from the client was excellent as follows:
“We required a sanitary, truly food grade pump to improve the food safety aspects of handling various syrups, including Golden Syrup and Treacle. The pump required to do this had to be able to handle a variety of high and low temperatures, high viscosity syrups at a relatively low flow rate, as well as hot water for CIP at a very high flow rate.
The Twin Screw pump has no touching parts and is capable of significant over speed to achieve the CIP flows required. All round this Twin Screw pump has met the criteria required admirably.”