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Reducing vacuum system maintenance costs

20 February 2023

Find out how German company, Emsland Fresh Poultry has saved 70% on vacuum system maintenance costs.

A total of 36 vacuum pumps are used to supply Emsland Fresh Poultry’s transport system with vacuum to ensure that waste from meat production, as well as ready-to-eat products, can be transported from A to B safely, effectively and hygienically via a pneumatic suction conveying system.

"We don't throw anything away – everything is processed – for human consumption or as high-quality animal feed," said Johannes Kohne, technical manager at the plant. For this reason it is important to be able to visualise the entire process chain. 

In addition to three compound feed plants, the organisation also includes a hatchery and two chicken slaughtering and cutting plants. Today the plant employs around 2,500 people to process chicken pieces from blade to fillet for food retail and further processing in various weight and packaging units. 

Early in 2022, Kohne made the decision to replace the old vacuum system with oil-lubricated rotary vane vacuum pumps with new MINK rotary vane vacuum pumps from Busch Vacuum Solutions. The advantages of these claw vacuum pumps were obvious to him – thanks to their dry operating principle, they do not require operating fluids in the compression chamber and operate nearly maintenance-free. "Not only have we saved time tending to the systems, but we have also saved 70% of our traditional maintenance costs. Specialists spending hours cleaning pumps and changing oil on the weekend is now a thing of the past," explained Kohne. “What's more, thanks to the IE4 motors that drive the pumps, around 274,500 kWh of energy can be saved each year when compared with the original system. 

A digital solution
Emsland Fresh Poultry also took advantage of digitalisation capabilities offered by Busch, with the OTTO digital condition monitoring service which combines condition monitoring of vacuum pumps with a service package.

The pumps are continuously monitored, sending performance data such as pump temperature, vibrations, and inlet pressure to the cloud, which can then be accessed via PC, tablet or smartphone. "How high the transmission oil temperature is, whether the inlet pressure is constant, how high the exhaust air temperature is – we didn't know all that before. And now, thanks to OTTO, we even have it on our tablet via the app," said Kohne. Today, the data from every pump is available in real-time on the tablets of all 60 company technicians so they always know the system’s current condition and can intervene if something does not run properly. 

Emsland Fresh Poultry has also signed an Active Service Contract for maintenance with Busch which through targeted, predictive maintenance, it hopes to be able to prevent excessive wear and premature failure of the system. 

Reliability is crucial for the organisation, as otherwise, manufacturing would come to a standstill, and potentially allowing food to spoil. On the processing lines, all cut chicken pieces fall through collection hoppers into dedicated vessels. A ball valve opens every six minutes and the contents are extracted. 

The vacuum pumps provide the vacuum required for extraction, transport and the cleaning process at the end of the production shift. Based on the data that is permanently sent to the cloud, standard cycles are calculated. These are used to align with the actual pressure profile to detect deviations in advance, allowing company technicians to act ahead of time. "We want to be able to fix any problems before they arise," concluded Kohne. 

Fit for the future
Other central vacuum systems from Busch are also in use at the plant, providing additional transport systems with vacuum. Twenty-five special oxygenated versions of the vacuum pumps are used for packaging under protective gas with an elevated oxygen level (MAP). All 135 existing pumps will be retrofitted with the IoT Kit in the near future. 


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