How Pumps Help The F&B Sector Meet Environmental Targets
As people become more and more cautious about the environment, governments continue to set ambitious environmental targets for food and beverage (F&B) manufacturing. The F&B sector is one of the highest industrial energy users in the world, with fans and pumps accounting for about 12% of the sector’s emissions.
Nonetheless, F&B businesses can make direct energy savings with pumps by using more efficient motors that can be retrofitted to current technology. The motor choice is just a part of the solution pumps can bring to F&B production. Read on to learn more about how pumps can help the F&B sector meet environmental targets.
Ultimate Objective
The ultimate objective for designing more efficient pumps is to achieve a more cost-effective manufacturing operation that results in optimum product gains while using fewer resources and a healthier bottom line. With the current environmental and economic situations, energy consumption has become a top priority for many customers, so designing more efficient pumps is necessary.
The overall cost of ownership for the customers needs to be optimised for their specific process covering efficiency, reliability, and productivity, and downtime must be kept to a minimum. For instance, in using positive displacement pumps for glutinous media, it is vital to ensure that the process has less slip to maximise efficiency, which is essentially the product’s preservation. This can be assured in the way the pump manufacturers design internal clearances.
New Challenges
Pumps in the F&B sector currently face new challenges, such as processing plant-based foods in response to customer demand. The more glutinous the media, the more energy is needed for processing. F&B producers turn to pump manufacturers to provide the specific expertise required in areas like viscosity and pressure.
Luckily, specific sine pumps are not impacted by viscosity in the same manner as lobe pumps. They also need lower torque to operate them, so smaller motors can be used. The sinusoidal motor produces robust suction with low pulsation, low shear, and gentle handling of various viscous products without modifying the pump and with minimal impact on power requirements. Compared with other pumps, continuous flow ensures up to 50% less energy usage.
Product Recovery
A big production operation can lead to millions of dollars of savings every year. For some F&B manufacturers, product recovery savings far exceed any energy-saving initiatives. They claim that cost savings can be up to 32 times greater in comparison to the annual cost of the energy required to operate the pump.
If a pump cannot discharge production lines or strip suction, there is a significant environmental impact with more water, chemicals, and energy needed for cleaning. This calls for higher levels of wastewater and residue disposal as well.
Fortunately, some pump manufacturers can develop a robust disc technology that can pump the air when there is no fluid, thus creating a vacuum effect on the suction side of the pump and a compressor effect on the discharge side. So, after the product has been discharged, the technology pumps air to force out the product plug for recovery. This technology can ultimately reduce unloading time by a few hours, increase product recovery, and boost energy savings.
Reuse, conservation, and sustainability measures
F&B plants are among the main targets of legislative pressure these days. They are under increasing pressure to minimise wastewater treatment and water consumption mainly. This will significantly reduce the cost of chemicals, water supply, and energy bills from heating, pumping, and cooling water.
Reuse, conservation, and sustainability initiatives are essential. For instance, process water constitutes the biggest use in the food sector, so accurate and controlled dosing pumps are critical to delivering the right amount of fluid, thereby eliminating any risk of overdosing or underdosing. Some peristaltic pumps provide highly accurate dosing by allowing incremental and precise adjustments. They can deal with applications that need 0.1ml per minute to 2,000ml per minute dosing.
Conclusion
The benefits that pumps can bring to the F&B sector are multifaceted. With the increasing legislative pressure upon the F&B industry to meet environmental targets, the innovations that pump manufacturers continuously come up with are crucial. Just like high pressure cleaners and air compressors in Singapore, pumps can also offer a sustainable solution to the environmental challenges that the F&B sector faces.