Shaftless Screw Conveyor Loadout System for Carrot Pomace Bolthouse Farms

General Description

WM Bolthouse Farms, Inc. was established by carrot farmers with the goal to provide fresh vegetables to consumers all around the United States. As the first company to grow, process and distribute bagged carrots in 1959, Bolthouse Farms continues to expand by adding processing facilities with new product lines while keeping bagged carrots as the main focus of business. Bolthouse Farms now offers healthy drinks and salad dressings with multiple fresh vegetables and flavors.

Bolthouse Farms takes pride in using every part of the carrot for beneficial use with no waste or landfilling. Carrot pomace is a byproduct of making carrot juice concentrate and is very high in moisture content with a consistency of Play-Doh. The carrot pomace has a very high nutritional value and is sold to livestock farmers to be used in animal feed. Originally, the carrot pomace was pumped after processing to a truck load out area. Pumping the carrot pomace caused multiple problems. In order to pump the carrot pomace, water had to be added causing the trucks to be mostly filled with water. The livestock farmers only wanted the carrot pomace and not the added water. Also, several types of pumps were tried that could not meet capacity requirements and caused problems with the carrot pomace backing up the whole process.

Design Parameters

KWS Advantages

Bolthouse Farms knew that pumping the carrot pomace was not feasible or economical but was unsure of a proper way to convey this product. Engineers from Bolthouse Farms contacted KWS to discuss their application. KWS acquired a product sample and tested the carrot pomace in our specially designed shaftless screw conveyor. KWS provided Bolthouse Farms with videos of the successful tests and explained the many advantages of KWS Shaftless Screw Conveyors for their application. KWS provided complete layout drawings with structural support locations to the Bolthouse Farms engineers as well as 2D and 3D CAD models so the new KWS equipment could be overlaid in the CAD drawing of the full plant.

Special Features

The process of making carrot concentrate requires heating to approximately 190-degrees F. KWS designed the Transfer Screw Conveyor with TIVAR H.O.T. trough liners for the first 32-feet because it is closest to the heat source. The TIVAR H.O.T. liners can handle temperatures up to 275-degrees F so there would be no issue with melting the UHMW liners. The balance of the trough liners utilized a wear alert dual-color UHMW liner material that will be visually inspected for possible replacement.

The Truck Load Out Conveyor was designed to evenly load trucks by discharging carrot pomace from multiple discharge locations along the length of the truck bed. KWS slide gates were used to control the flow of material from a specific discharge location. The KWS slide gates are very rugged in design and easy to operate.

Bolthouse Farms requested the use of drive units with twin taper bushed gear reducers as opposed to standard flange mounted screw conveyor drives. The KWS Floating Torque Arm Trough End was a perfect solution for the drive arrangement and the overall footprint of the conveyors was maintained.