Last year, ISF received an enquiry from one of our valued customers, a UK wide animal feed milling business, which we have worked with for more than 35 years.
This project was at their animal feed mill in Buckinghamshire, where they produce poultry feed to supply customers nationwide.
The problem:
The customer wanted to upgrade their existing single deck cooler in the mill by replacing it with a new double deck cooler. The cooler is essential for cooling the feed pellets produced in the mill, so that they’re ready to be distributed. Upgrading to a double deck cooler would improve their daily operations by reducing the changeover time between batches of feed.
As the mill was built in in old aircraft hangar this low-profile building is just two floors high. Due to the height restrictions the customer knew that it would be a challenge to fit a conventional double deck cooler into the available space.
Our Solution:
Following a site survey, our highly experienced team created a bespoke solution that would work around the height restrictions. The whole process was designed and planned by our in-house designers and project managers, including the design of the new equipment, the installation process, and completion of method statements and risk assessments.
Our skilled fabrication engineers manufactured a bespoke, special under-hopper, which incorporates a 1.5m wide chain and flight conveyor for discharging from the cooler under hopper into the next conveyor in the process.
As the cooler comes with a standard hopper from the supplier, we made a new, non-standard under-hopper. By designing it to be as shallow as possible, and shortening the support legs, we were able to reduce the overall height by 500mm, enabling it to fit within the limited space.
As the replacement conveyor is wider than the existing conveyor, it has been designed to operate at a lower speed to ensure that it can still adequately feed the existing downstream equipment.
We arranged for two teams of three engineers to complete the installation of the new, upgraded equipment within the agreed three-day shutdown period. We remained onsite for the electrical commissioning, which was completed by our clients in house team, to ensure that everything was up and running as planned.
The Outcome:
By ensuring we supplied a solution that was compatible with our client’s height restrictions, we have been able to provide them with the double deck cooler they needed, installed in the limited space available.
The new double deck cooler (upgraded from a single deck) provides two key benefits:
- It is a larger cooler, increasing throughput from approximately 12 tonnes per hour, to around 16 tonnes per hour.
- If the product is changed (e.g. from one size of pellets to another, or to a different product formulation), then the batch changeover time is reduced. This is because product is held in the top deck to cool, whilst the bottom deck is discharging into the finished product bins ready for dispatch.
Therefore, the production time, volume and efficiency at the mill have all improved.
Upgrading the cooler was the first phase of this exciting project. Phase 2 is currently in progress, which includes the upgrade of the press, conditioner, and sieve to bulk out-loading bins. This will see the throughput further increase to approximately 20 tonnes per hour. An overall increase of more than 60%!
Being presented with a project like this gave us the opportunity to showcase one of our core values of problem solving – never questioning if we can do something, instead, we question how we are going to do it.
