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Grain & Feed Milling Technology is published six times a year by Perendale Publishers Ltd of the United Kingdom.All data is published in good faith, based on information received, and while every care is taken to prevent inaccuracies, the publishers accept no liability for any errors or omissions or for the consequences of action taken on the basis of information published. ©Copyright 2010 Perendale Publishers Ltd. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced in any form or by any means without prior permission of the copyright owner. Printed by Perendale Publishers Ltd. ISSN: 1466-3872

Digital Re-print - May | June 2011 Pelleting: The link between practice and engineering

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A feedmill needs to produce pellets in a hygienic way with the least costs and the highest efficiency. This cannot

be realised without the close relationship between the operators in the field and the engineers at the drawing table.

Through this cooperation equipment manufacturer CPM Europe in Amsterdam,

the Netherlands, has been able to launch many ‘firsts’, which have later been adopted and copied to industry standards.

Plant operators working in the feed indus-try often consider the handling of their pel-leting equipment to be an art. Manufacturers

of these machines consider their business closer related to science. But this science can learn from the pelleting artists by developing and implementing demands and views from practice.

The engineers at CPM Europe are the last ones to deny that practice is closely intertwined with their work on the computer controlled drawing programs.

“Our close rela-tionship to practice and our ability to translate practical improvements into factual equipment has delivered us almost always a competitive advantage, which is especially valuable in an industry, which is not specifically known for its innovative power,” says Peter Lange, sales manager at CPM Europe.

Conditioning with HygeniserCPM is active in the grinding and pel-

leting section of the feed manufacturing process.

Before pelleting the feed mash needs to be treated before it enters the pellet mill.

This conditioning of the mash has several advantages. Proper conditioning ensures a better pellet quality (hardness, durability) resulting in better conversion rates with the animals. Conditioning improves pel-let mill capacity, reduces electrical power use and reduces wear of dies and rollers. Furthermore with conditioning more dif-ficult (cheaper) ingredients can be used.

Conditioning is a combination of moisture addition, (steam and/or water), mechanical treatment (kneading and shearing) and ther-mal treatment (time/temperature).

Especially the last feature has become essential in feed manufacturing.

Through higher temperatures the feed is hygienised and bugs are already killed in the conditioner. CPM was at the forefront of this development with the introduction of the hygieniser or super conditioner. This piece of equipment has shown to be an extremely efficient conditioner before pelleting and it is much cheaper than an expander, which is also often used. Table 1 shows the differences between an expander and the hygieniser.

Hot start mixerOne small thing was still a problem:

when starting the conditioning process the first approximate 100kg do not reach the required temperature and have to be bypassed or discarded before pelleting.

Pelleting: The link between practice and engineering

“Through higher temperatures the

feed is hygienised and bugs are

already killed in the conditioner.

CPM was at the forefront of this

development with the introduction of

the hygieniser or super conditioner”

Grain&feed millinG technoloGy30 | may - June 2011

FEATURE

CPM has overcome this problem by developing the Hot Start Mixer, which func-

tions as a buffer in the start-up of the conditioning process. The paddles and screw in the first section of the hygieniser at start-up turn in reversed

direction until the mash has reached the required temperature and then the direction is changed and the mash can flow through the hygieniser. There is no more need for

a bypass and the full batch of the feed can be used without chance of recontamination.

Specialist in pelletingAround 50 percent of all pellet mills used

in the world are made by CPM. So the company indeed can call itself

a specialist in pelleting. Pelleting is not just the use of a machine that turns ground and mixed ingredients into pellets, it is a process and begins after the grinding process with conditioning, followed by the actual pellet-ing and then cooling of the hot pellets and where applicable the addition of fats.

Pelleting is also about energy consump-tion. The way the die and the die rolls are positioned largely determine how much energy can be added to the product.

There is a close relationship between energy consumption and pellet quality. The more energy is put into the pellet the better its quality will be. At the pellet mill this is limited to max. 20kWh/tonne.

The consumption of energy is also depending on the roller distance to the die.

An increase in roller distance will result in higher energy consumption. To be able to manage this process CPM developed the Lineator, which enables the operator to adjust the roller distances while pelleting and thus gives him the opportunity to influence pellet quality on the spot.

Energy efficiency is also depending on the method of power transmission in the pellet mill. For this reason CPM pellet mills operate with a gear box instead of double V-belt drive.

According to Lange, gearbox transmis-sions have a high efficient power transmis-

sion. “Do you real-

ise that a gear box has an over 11 percent higher efficiency than a two stage V-belt drive?” Lange says.

“Do you real-ise the savings? For a 250kW with an

operating time of 6,000 hours per year and an ener-gy price of eight eurocents per kWh this would mean a energy cost of €120,000. At 11 percent higher efficiency this would mean a saving of €13,200 in the advantage of a gear box drive.”

Quick die change

Every pellet plant operator knows the burden of changing a die.

Not only is it a heavy and time consuming job, it also adds con-siderably to the down-time of the plant. The CPM engineering group in Amsterdam developed a quick die change system for its 32" and 36" pellet mills.

The object was to have the pellet mill up and

The Quick Change clamps enable the operators to change which die within half

all hour

Grain&feed millinG technoloGy may - June 2011 | 31

CPM is again setting the standard for the future with the recently award winning developed roll speed measurement system

FEATURE

Despite the economic crisis Lange is quite satisfied with the order list of pel-let mills and other related equipment.

A walk through their workshop close to the old Amsterdam docks confirm this.

Loads of equipment are ready for shipping to customers all over Europe. Remarkable are the heavy 355kW motors on the pel-let mills.

“It is a development from the wood pelleting industry. The motors are available and we adjusted our gearbox to be able to mount these heavies on our mills,” Lange says.

Also present in the workshop is a miniature feed mill or labora-tory as it is being called at CPM.

“This enables us to test the most exotic raw materials from all kinds of industries to see if they are pelletable. We are always working on innovations. This way we can stay one step ahead of competition and sup-ply good quality machines for a reasonable price,” he adds.

California Pellet Mill group The history of CPM dates back to

1883 in California's Napa Valley when the California Pellet Mill Company manufac-tured presses, Crushers and stemmers for winemakers. In 1931, the company revolu-tionised the feed processing industry with the introduction of the first commercially successful pellet mill.

A few years later, in 1938, the Roskamp story began when John Roskamp formed the Roskamp Huller Company. In the l980s, Roskamp Champion was born with the pur-chase of Roskamp Roller Mill Company and Champion Hammer Mills.

In 2002, CPM purchased Beta Raven of St Charles, Missouri, USA, supplier of computerised process controls and ingre-dient scaling systems. In 2006, Century Extrusion, from Century Inc of Traverse City, Michigan, was acquired. The latest acquisi-tion was Crown Iron Works, a specialist in oilseed processing. World headquarters and Roskamp Champion production facilities are located in Waterloo, Iowa. In Asia, CPM is present in Singapore and has production facilities in Wuxi, China. Other plants are located in Crawfordsville, Indiana; Merrimack, New Hampshire, USA, and Amsterdam, The Netherlands.

CPM is owned by Gilbert Global Equity Partners. This strategic and financial partner-ship has enabled CPM to grow organically and by acquisition.

working the roll speed measurement inten-sively while operating the remote roller setting Lineator. The new integrated roll speed measurement device is expected to work with very little maintenance and high accuracy.

It was observed that at clean die and roll-ers, the roll speed measurement allows an automatic ‘zero positioning’ of the Lineator.

Until now this ‘zero positioning’ proves to be a rather subjective interpretation of various operators. Different operators can ‘pre-load’ the rollers differently against the die to set the zero-position. With the roll speed measurement the zero-position is set at the moment both rollers are rotating at nominal speed.

In practice influencing the pellet quality is reached by using a thicker die or BOA-compactor or expander.

“With the roll speed meas-urement these become obso-lete,” Lange says.

“The Lineator can now be used to put more energy into the pellet. The speed of the rollers is measured and if they rotate too slowly a signal fol-lows. The operator then can take action to avoid choking of the die.”

Hendrix installed the roll speed measurement and operates the by-pass “quick dump feed chute” if the roller speed passes the minimum value of 320rpm. The experience is that after a roller runs under speed condition that the chokes and the main engine overloads.

According to Lange the Lineator with roll speed measurement reaches its highest poten-tial when a relatively thin die is used. Pellet quality and throughput can be influenced up to 30 percent and less die changes are needed.

running with a new die only 30 minutes after the end of the previous batch. This means that for the actual (hot) die change only 20 minutes are being reserved. To meet this objective CPM installs a pneumatic the

hoist, automatic knives posi-tioning, automatic roller adjust type Lineator, 18 segments die clamp type bear claw and pre-assembled die with stiffening

ring and rotary cone.With this system two people can remove

a die in less than four minutes and the same people can fit a new die in less than five minutes. The quick die change clamp can also be mounted on existing machines that have been supplied by CPM in the last 10 years.

Roll speed measurementThe latest innovation in combination with

the Lineator is die roll speed measurement, which was put into service in July of this year. Hendrix-UTD in Lochem (NL) has already been working with roll speed measurement for approximately 10 years at the available CPM 7730-7 and 7932-9 pellet mill series.

The maintenance of this self-constructed system is time consuming.

However, the production employees are

With the lineator the distance between the roll and the die can automatically be adjusted. A new feature is roll speed measurement, which can protect the die from choking

The hot start mixer accumulates feed until the required temperature is reached and then evacuates the feed and increases throughput

Grain&feed millinG technoloGy32 | may - June 2011

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In this issue:

• Synthesis of animal feed formulation techniques:

Linear and Non-Linear model

• Pellet production

to save energy,

improve feed efficiency

and safety

May 2011

• Choosing the right Hazard Monitoring System

• Pelleting: The link between practice and engineering

• Conditioning as part of the pelleting process

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