When thinking about designing a sustainable plant, the first line of defense is your facility manager. Whether you’re selecting a flexible connector system or optimizing your water systems, their experience with the industrial plant layout and systems allows them the ability to identify ways to reduce energy consumption, isolate hazards and minimize and recycle waste.
Energy Audit
Many corporations have established Health, Environmental & Safety (HES) departments as part of their ongoing efforts toward sustainability. Each industry has its own unique HES compliance guidelines. Plant safety within the food processing industry generally falls into two categories: equipment safety and environmental safety with the goal of keeping workers and consumers healthy and safe.
When people think about industrial safety, they often associate danger with large equipment failure. But, have you considered that something such as a poorly installed flexible connector can be equally dangerous. The result may be employee exposure to hazardous dusts, an explosive environment, and overall poor working conditions.
It should come as no surprise that in the baking industry, accuracy of weight is absolutely crucial. Where proper powder amounts of flour, sugar and other important baking powders matter, the ability to consistently get exact weights is a vital component of plant operations.
When plants use rigid standard connectors that can often be installed in different ways by different operators, the recorded weight can vary. Even the smallest difference in the amount of a particular ingredient can affect the outcome of a baked good, rendering a batch useless.
For bulk powder processing plants of all types – from dairy to pharmaceutical — plant safety is job No. 1. The sheer number of moving parts and equipment means a host of factors could go wrong at any given time. That’s where Inherent Safer Design (ISD) comes into play.
ISD aims to design and operate a safe processing plant. It tries to eliminate, or at the very least very significantly reduce, hazards in a plant rather than just manage them with procedures or hardware.
For every bulk powder processing plant, proper cleaning and maintenance of equipment is essential to ensure sanitation and quality of product. Finding ways to clean and maintain equipment while improving plant efficiency is even more essential.
That’s particularly true for plants that must batch change often for different types of powder, such as food, dairy and pharmaceutical processors.
Using outdated hose clamps and flexible sleeves, time spent taking down and cleaning equipment can be significant – not to mention the time spent cleaning up any resulting leaks or messes.
Dust explosions in bulk powder processing plants are a serious issue. Over the past 30 years, more than 300 dust explosions have killed more than 120 workers in grain silos, sugar plants and food processing plants. And in 2008, after a disastrous explosion in a Georgia sugar factory, a bill was passed to require the Occupational Safety and Hazards Administration (OSHA) to set standards to regulate combustible dusts.
The bulk powder processing industry should be extremely concerned with preventing cross contamination of allergens. 11 million people in the U.S. suffer from food allergies, and as many as 200 deaths a year are the result of an allergic reaction, according to the Journal of Allergy and Clinical Immunology.
Did you know 8 foods account for 90% of allergic reactions?
1. Peanuts
2. Tree nuts (walnuts, pecans)
3. Fish
4. Shellfish
5. Eggs
6. Milk
7. Soy
8. Wheat
Exposure to dust in bulk powder processing plants can result in many different health problems. Dust hazards include eye irritation, nasal dryness and obstruction, headaches, dermatitis, occupational asthma, eczema and severe allergic reactions for your workers. Plus, concentrations of dust particles in the air can explode if ignited.
Bulk material processing plants typically use a dust control system, such as a baghouse dust collector, to capture and manage dust, and reduce dust hazards. The National Institute of Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSH), however, recommend using whole-plant ventilation to supplement existing dust control equipment in order to reduce dust levels.
