Helping industry produce better product, faster, and at lower cost has been a driving force for many of the most innovative process equipment companies. Today process automation remains the chief tool available to process industries seeking to reduce costs and improve product quality.

To help processors capture greater material cost savings while assuring product quality, the K-Tron Process Group recently unveiled its improved Feed Smart Deluxe Recipe Optimizer, a Microsoft Excel workbook (available as a free download) that helps processors calculate the potential savings hidden in their current process recipes.

The expanded and enhanced FeedSmart Deluxe adds a new level of functionality for processors wishing to minimize ingredient costs, evaluate options, and make the best possible decision when it comes time to purchase a new feeding system. The program lets you quickly compute the lowest possible recipe cost for every blend, formulation or compound, plus you can calculate additional savings that result from improved feeder accuracy. 

A Seminar Just for Pharmaceutical Process Engineers
Like all manufacturers, the search for greater productivity in the pharmaceutical sector has been driven largely by global competition and economic conditions. But their drive for process innovation may be further intensified by political pressure in many countries to do something to reduce mounting health care costs across the board.

In response to the industry’s growing interest in process improvement, a group of process equipment manufacturers have been sponsoring free seminars in for process engineers in the pharmaceutical industry. “Innovations in Pharmaceutical Processing” is produced by the K-Tron Process Group in collaboration with Leistritz, Howorth Air Technology, Inc, Hosokawa Micron Powder Systems, and Quadro Engineering Corp.

Seminars have been held in major pharmaceutical processing regions around the world. I recently attended one in King of Prussia, near Philadelphia, PA. Presentations covered key topics of design in pharmaceutical processing, such as containment, continuous processing using twin screw extrusion, pneumatic conveying, milling, sieving, screening and size reduction, continuous blending, active freeze drying of products and ingredients, and feeding options for a variety of applications.

Processing Seminar Travels to California
The next stop for the pharmaceutical seminars is California--September 22, 2009, in Santa Ana, CA and September 24, 2009, in San Francisco. The seminar offers pharmaceutical processors detailed process and analytical information about important  topics and trends in the industry.

The seminar organizers have put together an objective technical overview on how to improve current operations and take advantage of new technologies, such as lubricant feeding of the modern tablet press illustrated above. You can register online for the seminar, which has been developed to meet the information needs of scientists, engineers, production and manufacturing personnel, researchers, formulation scientists, product development and process transfer personnel.

Don Dunnington
Blog Moderator

Vibration technology has many uses.  Most often an industrial vibrator is used to promote the flow of powder and bulk materials from bins, silos and other types of vessels (see video).  One other use is in the design and manufacture of vibrating tables for compacting material.

A vibrating table will be custom sized for the intended application.  For example, the picture shown here illustrates the use of an electric eccentric vibrator within a vibrating table that is used to compact the soil-fertilizer-etc. mixture within the box of a tree being prepared for shipment to a jobsite by the tree manufacturer/nursery.  In this application the vibration compacts the soil tightly around the tree helping to secure it in place for transport and to ensure the proper mixture of soil and fertilizer within the box.

In this application there was a significant savings of labor costs.  The trees are packed and compacted far more quickly than before, and the quality of the compaction has improved as well.

If you'd like more information about this type of application or about the use of industrial vibration technology to promote material flow from bins and silos, give Cougar Industries a call at 800-262-2106 or 815-224-1200. 

Email at cougar@cougarindustries.com and visit us on the web at www.cougarindustries.com.

I just returned from MINExpo in Las Vegas where a record 36,000 visitors and 1,300 exhibitors spent three days buying and selling the equipment that digs and processes the raw materials that feed our bulk materials industries. Attendance was up more than 50 percent over the previous show and exhibit space at 600,000 sq. ft. was up 30 percent.
 
This is an industry of big machines and huge capital investments, and MINExpo, which like the Olympics occurs just once every four years, brings an impressive array of equipment under one roof. Caterpillar set the mark as biggest of the big in terms of booth size and probably for the size of their machines on display here. Their big 797F and 795F AC mining trucks, standing as tall as three story houses, drew the most attention and more photographers than the fabled Las Vegas strip.

Lines of visitors snaked up the stairs to sit in the driver's seats. On a mezzanine connecting the stairs to one of the truck cabs, two training simulators let visitors test their skills at driving these monsters.

There were quite a few material handling equipment manufacturers at the show. Next to the Caterpillar booth, Gundlach was showing its 2050S Roll Crusher. Together with Gundlach's Cage Paktor, these machines have played an important role in helping a number of Canadian mines meet the booming demand for potash. Canada's remarkable growth in potash production has been driven by agriculture's increased demand for fertilizer to feed the frenzy for biofuels in markets around the world.

The flooding of a major Russian mine pushed demand for Canadian potash even higher. Russia, Canada and Belarus account for 85 percent of known potash reserves. Canada alone has half of all reserves. Russia had been the major supplier of China, and the Russian mine closing came at a time when China's demand for fertilizer was growing at more than 12 percent per year. Flooding is common problem for potash mines, and Russian potash mining is expected to return soon, giving equipment makers an opportunity for another surge in orders from the potash industry.

Coal has seen a resurgence with today's growing energy demands, and coal mining had a major presence at the show. Pennsylvania Crusher showed its Mountaineer Sizer. The Mountaineer Sizer is designed for primary or secondary sizing of coals, industrial minerals, and ores with minimum fines generation.

Penn Crusher shared exhibit space with its sister company Jeffrey Rader, which showed its NF Electromechanical Vibrating Feeder. This feeder is designed specifically for the material handling needs of the coal industry, so that burden doesn't dampen vibration and actually boosts performance. These sub-resonant tuning characteristics assure efficient material transfer, promote quieter operation, and reduce energy and maintenance costs.

Eriez marketing communications manager Keith Jones told me the top attraction at their booth was their magnetic separator for the coal industry and minerals processing. Eriez Suspended Electromagnets (SE) remove damaging tramp iron from materials conveyed in heavy burden depths on flat conveyors or chutes. They automatically remove tramp iron from heavy product flows such as coal or rock being conveyed on belts, vibratory feeders or chutes. When designed with a continuously rotating belt, these magnets are self-cleaning.

Series 6000 Suspended Permanent (SP) Magnets automatically remove large amounts of ferrous from nonferrous materials conveyed in heavy burden depths, on almost any type of conveyor or chute. These magnets require no power source, operate practically maintenance free, offer uninterrupted magnetic protection and can be installed quickly and easily.

Jones said the SP Magnets from Eriez offer a level of performance that was previously available only with electro magnets. Permanent mag¬nets designed just a few years ago don't achieve near the performance of this new line, he said.

Don Dunnington
Moderator

The K-Tron Process Group’s Director of Global Marketing Kathy Hunter has retired following 20 years with the company. In her role as a member of the Powder Show (now PTXi) advisory group, Kathy came to be known and admired widely by her peers in the industry. You can see Joe Taylor’s online video interview with Kathy at this year’s PTXi show.

She was also active in the Process Equipment Manufacturers Association (PEMA) and was a familiar figure to those attending shows and K-Tron sponsored feeding and pneumatic conveying technology seminars serving the food, pharmaceutical, plastics, chemical and other process industries.

At her retirement luncheon, K-Tron Sales and Marketing V.P. Robert Barnett (see photo) recounted Kathy’s career at K-Tron and her many accomplishments. He recalled how she came to K-Tron from Glassboro State College (now Rowan University) where she was director of the Management Institute.

Kathy said her transition from academia to industrial marketing seemed like a steep climb when she arrived. At the time K-Tron was introducing the first digital feeder controls, and Kathy said it took some concentrated effort to get comfortable with the constantly evolving feeder technology. During her career at K-Tron she helped launch innovative products such as modular volumetric and gravimetric feeders, the Smart Force Transducer, the Smart Weigh Belt Feeder, and the Bulk Solids Pump (BSP). She played a key role in transitioning the K-Tron Feeder Group into the K-Tron Process Group with the acquisition of Premier Pneumatics in 2006.

Although she is retiring, Kathy says she plans to remain active in the process equipment arena. After she takes some time off to visit with her son’s and daughter’s families and especially “spend more time with the grandchildren,” she says she will be doing some consulting. So while her garden in Cherry Hill, NJ may get a little more attention this summer, Kathy fully expects to keep on tending to the abundant garden of friends and interests she has developed over 20 years in the process equipment industry.

Don Dunnington
Moderator

I recently was able to speak in front of a group of 40 engineers representing some 1,000 years of experience in bulk solids material handling at the October meeting of the HMHS (Houston Material Handling Society).  This was truly a humbling experience for me ....... and one I took very seriously so I was not going to present a commercial.

A friend of mine recently wrote an Op-Ed for an automation magazine and in his editorial he said some things that I really identified with and I felt the HMHS engineers could benefit from so I started of the meeting with some quotes from Dr. Peter Martin's editorial in the September issue of InTech magazine where he stated that "engineers must step up and assume a leadership role within their companies by helping drive new levels of business performance". 

He further stated that the reason most companies don't understand the true benefit of the engineering discipline is that "most financial systems cannot measure the improvements" that engineers make.  I decided that my discussion about "recent directions in level monitoring and measurement of bulk solids" needed to provide these engineers some tidbits they could use to "add value" to their companies performance.

Want to know more? Click here for the rest of the story.

Recently K-Tron International was included in an AP story on "Europe's tough antitrust stance" towards Microsoft. The thrust of the story was how "most companies do not have enough market muscle to require their customers to buy a broad sweep of their products, as Microsoft has."

It was encouraging to see a news reporter expand a business story to include a wider scope of manufacturers. However, it was equally discouraging to see once again how little news people understand about the process industries. This is how the article described our business:

"K-Tron makes machines that crush or weigh objects and tubes that feed material into other industrial machines. Its customers are global and its factories are in the United States, Switzerland, the United Kingdom and China."

This awkward description starts off with "crush or weigh objects," a muddle of crushers (see Gundlach, Penn Crusher or Jeffrey) and weigh feeders. These machines are about as far apart as you can get in process equipment. Then, in an effort to avoid using a technical-sounding term (perhaps "pneumatic conveyors") we are treated to the inelegant-sounding "tubes that feed material into other industrial machines."

It's a mystery how such inexact descriptions are supposed to clarify things for the reader. The problem is that neither the public, nor the journalists who enlighten them, have the vocabulary—the mental images—necessary for a clear description of the process industries. When people think of manufacturing—if they think about it at all—they seem to have this image of cars moving along Henry Ford's assembly line.

This is a Problem for Your Industry
When the popular media fail to explain your industry adequately, the public has no clue how much they depend on the materials you process. In an age of instant pundits and global news, it's dangerous for people to be uniformed about your business.

You Can Help Right Here on this Blog
I'd like to enlist your help through this blog to improve the situation. With your help we can take the public on a tour of our plants and show them how our processes and equipment provide the materials that form, feed or improve our material world. You can contribute a story: sign up to become an author (we even offer prizes), comment here on this or other blog articles, or just send an email to don@powderandbulk.com and I'll post a story for you. Tell us about your process, and the next time a neighbor asks you what you do, you can show them.

Recently E-85 was added to the list of fuels being sold by two local Johnson Oil Shell fuel stations in the area in which I live.  For those of you that haven't been paying attention, gasoline prices have risen substantially in the past 24 months and Ethanol has become increasingly popular as an alternative fuel.  Auto manufacturers are ramping up to manufacture more and more FFV's (flexible fuel vehicles) that can run on "E-85", a fuel that is 85% Ethanol and 15% gasoline.

E-85 is a lower cost fuel at the stations I have seen it offered at.  At these stations regular gasoline is priced at $3.09 per gallon while E-85 is $2.49 per gallon.  What vehicles can run on E-85?  How is Ethanol made?  Why is there so much energy (no pun intended) being put into ramping up the availability of Ethanol and E-85?  All of these, and more, questions can be answered by a quick review of a free "white paper" made available by Monitor Technologies LLC.

The "white paper" is available free of charge by visiting the web page and downloading it.  Click here.  In addition to information about the Ethanol industry, this white paper reviews the production process used in "dry mills" that produce Ethanol from corn.  The white paper also identifies key players in the design and construction of Ethanol production facilities and solutions available for monitoring and measuring various material levels within a typical Ethanol production facility.

Joe Lewis
Vice President
Monitor Technologics LLC
800-766-6486
jlewis@monitortech.com
www.monitortech.com
www.flexar.info

Best of all, these seals are available fully-split.  No more holes in the ceiling.

Photo Caption:  A Meco OFS seal spinning
on a vertical agitator shaft, containing
chemical vapors.

I have been working to update K-Tron’s web pages to reflect the organizational changes that have combined our feeder business and vacuum conveying business into a single unit now called the K-Tron Process Group. This change has had an impact on almost every web page, and that's a lot of updating for such a large website.

At the core of K-Tron’s pneumatic conveying business is K-Tron PCS, which provides dilute and dense phase vacuum conveying solutions. Founded in Stockport, England in 1990, Pneumatic Conveying Systems (PCS) has built a reputation in the UK for its sanitary design and expertise in conveying hard to handle materials. Now that it has merged into the K-Ton process Group, PCS has an opportunity to be more widely known through K-Tron’s global distribution network.

What this Means to the Industry

If you haven’t yet setup an RSS reader so you can subscribe to newsfeeds, I’ll try to provide some practical and fun reasons for you to get started now.  For both practical and fun news in one feed, consider subscribing to Cool Tools.  Their recent review of  the book 40 Principles, Lateral Strategies for Innovation, introduced me to TRIZ.

TRIZ was developed by Genrich Altshuller and others in the former Soviet Union beginning in 1946.  TRIZ is based on the hypothesis that there are universal principles of invention that advance technology.  Over the last 50 years, more than 2 million patents have been examined, leading to these 40 principles of innovation,  which you can interact with on the TRIZ40 website.  Go to their home page to try their “interactive contradiction matrix.”

Also checkout the TRIZ Journal where you can find news, resources and learn more about what TRIZ is.

Click here for more about Cool Tools and other personal favorites in RSS feeds.  You’ll also find more here on RSS basics and other peoples’ favorite feeds. 

For another example of a cool tools for process engineers, you can download the free FeedSmart recipe optimizer on K-Tron’s website (requires registration to download).  This has been an exceptionally popular free tool that lets you compute the lowest possible recipe cost for every blend, formulation or compound you process, and calculate additional savings with improved feeder accuracy.

Don Dunnington