Animal feed coating efficiency increased

Leading UK ruminant feed manufacturer Dugdale Nutrition has installed two Krohne Optimass Coriolis mass flowmeters to measure accurately the volume of viscous, oil-based materials used on animal feed

Leading UK ruminant feed manufacturer Dugdale Nutrition has installed two Krohne Optimass Coriolis mass flowmeters to measure accurately the volume of viscous, oil-based materials used for coating animal feed.

The instruments ensure products remain within legal definitions and help to minimise production costs.

The Optimass flowmeters have been installed as part of the new Dugdale GBP140,000 coating plant.

The vegetable and fat-based coating material is expensive and controlling the amount used during production is essential for keeping manufacturing costs to a minimum.

The company also has to monitor accurately the amount of oil its products contain to ensure they keep within legal specifications.

Krohne was recently awarded the Queen's Award for Enterprise: Innovation 2005.

Dugdale chose to use the Krohne Optimass because of its ability to operate reliably and accurately when measuring high viscosity materials.

The instrument's single straight tube design allows viscous materials to flow freely through the instrument without blocking.

It also has no moving parts to restrict the flow of substances.

The coating material is gravity fed from stainless steel heating vats, which raise its temperature to between 55C and 70C.

It is then fed through stainless steel pipe work through the Optimass and into mixing vessels.

The new Dugdale coating plant is centrally controlled by a plc which reads pulses generated from machinery within the factory.

The Optimass flowmeters have been pre-calibrated to output a pulse for every 0.5 kg of material, which enables the company to monitor precisely the amount of coating material used.

"Finding a reliable, cost effective solution to measuring accurately the amount of coating material used during the manufacture of our feedstuff was important when we were looking for a supplier of flowmeters," said Alan Gillespie, mill manager at Dugdale.

"It was clear that the Optimass straight tube design would provide a reliable solution to measuring accurately the viscous coating material as well as having a lower cost than other instruments on the market".

Wellingborough-based Krohne Optimass Coriolis mass flowmeter is available in a range of sizes and can be used for low and high flow rate applications.

It is manufactured from materials that conform to Food and Drug Administration (FDA) guidelines and complies with EHEDG (European Hygienic Equipment Design Group) and 3A standards.

The meter is available with a wide range of industry standard hygienic process connectors which makes it ideally suited for use in food applications.

The Optimass will operate reliably and accurately under the most demanding conditions.

It incorporates the Krohne patented AST (Adaptive Sensor Technology) which tunes each meter independently of external forces and fluid density.

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