A dream of Californian wine
3 May 2000
Californian Beringer wine estates has optimised filtration in its diatomaceous earth (DE) unloading and winery waste filtration area. The winery has replaced a manual DE unloading system with an automated bulk bag unloader from Flexicon.
The bulk bag unloader is mounted on load cells, which transmit loss of weight information to a controller. As the flexible conveyor feeds a slurry tank, the controller, on reaching the set weight, slows the speed of DE to a dribble before stopping the conveyor. Dispensing accuracy gives more filtration runs per amount of DE consumed. Too little DE would allow effluent to plug the filters and too much DE would clog the filters and in either case more filtrations would be required.
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