White Paper: Safe Handling Of Sugar For Refineries And Consumers

Significant recent events have caused sugar refiners to review how materials are handled in the production facilities. Historically the refiners have used mechanical means (screw conveyors and bucket elevators) to handle bulk sugar. Recent changes in legislature atop industrial incidents have caused producers to seek alternatives, such as pneumatic conveying, as well as address the issue of dust collection in refineries.

A visit to sugar refineries around the world will quickly reveal the industry standardization of mechanical handling techniques, but it will also show the difficulty in maintaining these systems and the hazards than can be created. Being a commodity product, the refiners are accustomed to large throughputs of relatively low margin product. Screw conveyors for horizontal conveying and bucket elevators for vertical conveying offer lower power requirements than other methods, thus many plants were built to accommodate the limited flexibility of these systems. Mechanical systems tend to occupy large areas of plant space, often create interferences and are largely only effective in straight paths. A well planned facility can use these system types effectively. But, the need to expand or modify processes can lead to inefficient layouts the original plan did not intend to support.