Can it be a bit more?

Every year during the sugar beet campaign – from September to the end of January – some 2.5 million tons (2,500,000,000 kilos!) of sugar beet rolls into Cosun Beet’s factories. Attached to those beets are 60 to 80 million kilos of so-called “tare soil”: clay, sand and stones. This may be fertile soil, but sugar cannot be extracted from it. So the tare soil must be rinsed from the beets and removed.
This first stage of the production process is rather crude. The dirty beets roll and rinse with water through large washing drums and chutes. Naturally, the necessary wear and tear occurs in the process. We talk about the production process and wear prevention with technical manager, Section A team leader, Michel Reuvers:

Our sugar winning farm consists of three sections. Section A is where the beets come in. They are cleaned, cut, the juice is extracted and cleaned until a thin mixture remains. That goes to Section B which evaporates it, thickens it and centrifuges it. Then you’re left with sugar and molasses as a byproduct. Section C includes the utilities, such as boiler room, engine room and water supply.

Yes, with us the wear is the greatest. The beets are dumped from the trucks into the beet bunker, pulled back out of the bunker with screw spindles and transported on a long conveyor belt to the wash house. This is like a big washing machine, with pre-wash and main wash. The pre-wash is a big spinning barrel with protrusions in it to get the beets moving properly. We then put quite a gulp of water on that to loosen up as many sand and mud particles as possible.

We then pour everything into a transport chute that widens at the stone catchers, reducing the flow velocity. The heavier parts sink to the bottom where a paddle wheel fishes out the stones. This is very important because no stones are allowed to enter the cutting mills with the beets. The blades can’t stand that.

It depends on the conditions. The tare soil is 10 to 20% of the total weight. When the weather is wet or when it’s freezing it’s more than when the beets are delivered dry. Sometimes it is so bad, that the dwell time in the wash house is actually not enough to get all the dirt out.

Nevertheless, we have to bring in 1100 to 1250 tons of dirty beet per hour continuously to maintain the capacity of the plant. So then sometimes it gets stuck, things start clogging up. And of course, with more dirt, wear and tear also increases

No, in our company it’s actually the whole year. During the campaign period we have a full-continuum business. Then we have to keep going! Any necessary repairs we try to make without stopping the process. Between campaigns we do maintenance. Repairs, improvements, everything to prevent us from having problems during the campaign.

Indeed. Mr. Leenders once put ceramic tiles in a pump as a trial from another company in 2009, and it turned out to really help against wear and tear. That’s why I immediately thought of him when I wanted to do something with the beet gutter. Leenders, meanwhile, worked at Wivé, and was interested in trying it with the same ceramic tiles.

And what turned out … for the first time, the part made it to the end of the campaign without welding or support. In fact, upon inspection after the campaign, it was found to show no wear at all!

Covering everything with tile? Unfortunately, it’s not that easy. We are now looking with Wivé at what is possible. We have equipped a mud water pump with tile and have started lining pipes with polyurethane.

But doesn’t such a covering go off the diameter? No, because we wait until it has worn out five millimeters. So then you can add another 5mm without any problems. By the way, we are also replacing metal pipes with plastic ones.

Funnily enough, it sometimes turns out that softer material wears out less quickly. You also can’t just use any material everywhere. For example, ceramic on metal … that can cause problems with temperature differences because the ceramic material does not expand.

Exactly. I present the problems to Wivé, and we come up with solutions together. Sometimes Wivé immediately sees what the best way is. Sometimes we have to carry out a study. By now, our contact person at Wivé Techniek pretty much knows how things work for us. If not, we can bring him up to speed.