Looking at Modern Conveying Systems with Sanitation in Mind

Conveying systems are essential in potato processing plants as they play a crucial role in transporting potatoes from one area of the plant to another.

By utilizing conveyors, the entire process of sorting, cleaning, peeling, cutting, and packaging potatoes can be streamlined, making it more efficient and cost-effective. Additionally, conveyors can be customized to handle potatoes of varying sizes and shapes, and they can be designed to minimize damage to the potatoes during transport.

Key Technology, a member of the Duravant family of operating companies, recently introduced its reversible Zephyr™ conveyor. Achieving higher capacities than other horizontal-motion conveyors, Zephyr gently moves the product with a minimal bounce to protect the product quality and reduce noise. Now equipped to flow in either direction, the reversible Zephyr maximizes production line versatility while improving sanitation and minimizing maintenance.

“We’ve made design changes to our field-proven Zephyr to expand its capabilities and meet the needs of even more food processors. Previously, if customers needed to redirect a product stream, they had two options – diverter gates and reversible belt conveyors – both of which have more moving parts that require additional cleaning and service,” said Rudy Sanchez, Process Systems Product Development Manager at Key. “The new modified Zephyr offers the same simple design, great sanitation and low maintenance as our standard model but now with a reversible function.”

The reversible Zephyr is ideal for frozen bulk foods including potato products, fruits, vegetables, meat, and poultry, as well as dry products like potato chips/crisps, nuts, and cereals. Zephyr’s unique motion profile gently slides and conveys product with no segregation or stratification, and it reduces product damage and the loss of coatings such as seasoning, batter, and certain types of oil. The Zephyr offers up to twice the throughput of other horizontal-motion conveyors while limiting noise to 75 decibels or less.

When integrated with pneumatic controls on the production floor, the reversible Zephyr allows processors to change the direction of product flow with either the push of a button or automatically if fully integrated with the line. Reversible Zephyr can be configured to separate a single product stream into two side-by-side machines or even divert a single stream to two different downstream production lines to produce different products.

Zephyr’s robust construction helps maximize sanitation, ease cleaning, and reduce maintenance. Its easy-to-maintain drive system requires no timing setup and can be located in any position below the bed to support seamless integration with other equipment in the line.

To read the complete article, please refer to our latest March-April 2023 print issue of Potato Processing International.