Jerome & Horner

Case Study: Cold Chaff Collection - Efficient Dust Collection System

The Client, Kraft Foods Inc. is a globally recognized parent brand for a wide range of food, beverage and confectionery products. Kraft is a player in the global coffee market with a number of brands and factories across the world.

The Project

Green coffee beans start their processing journey in the cold section of the coffee facility. Here they are subjected to numerous steps as they move through an elaborate network of cleaning, weighing, batching and mixing equipment. In the first steps they are unbagged and cleaned - a process that produces large volumes of chaff (discarded husks) and dust. If it is not properly controlled the chaff poses a potential health or fire hazard. Kraft engineers had installed a dust collection system which is connected to a “cold chaff” consolidation system - a network of screw conveyors integrated to capture and collect the chaff in a large central dumpster.

Jerome and Horner were called in to confirm the equipment layout, install customer-supplied screw conveyors, design and fabricate chutes. We were also asked to design, fabricate, and install maintenance access to the dust collection system and to fabricate structural steel support for the screw conveyors. This required integrating a complex network of screw conveyors with an equally complex arrangement of piping and equipment, intersecting vertically and horizontally over six floors.

Challenge - Solution

Challenge The chaff management system has at least 10 locations where the chaff and dust is deposited into self-dumping carts, which then had to be emptied manually.The volumes of dust, chaff and soot produced, along with the need to move equipment to where it was needed, meant a lot of labour-intensive house-keeping was required to keep the facility safe and sanitary.

Solution We helped to upgrade the soot collection bag houses with explosion vents, re-routed ducting, and re-distributed air flow as needed.

Challenge The existing operation could not afford an significant amount of downtime so most of the work of integration was carried out during normal production.

Solution The way we work allows for most of the new equipment to be prefabricated and then installed quickly and efficiently. Our meticulously planned design and build process, which includes rigorous pretesting, delivers seamless installation with minimal down-time for clients.

Jerome and Horner – We Finish What We Start

This project demonstrates the quality of CAD expertise in the ranks of the Jerome and Horner team. The CAD work required finding an efficient solution to nest the new screw conveyors between all of the existing equipment. Jerome and Horner have the project management experience and system understanding that brings expert foresight to the most complex projects. We proudly deliver a winning combination of experience in effective and efficient building with cutting-edge, highly functional and, above all, creative design.