Dutch malting house installs Buhler cleaning innovation

Holland Malt, which was recently set up as a joint venture between the Dutch beer brewer Bavaria and the agricultural cooperative Agri?rm, believes that the installation of the larger version of the Buhler PRIMUS high-capacity grain cleaner will guarantee optimum processing results at a critical point in the supply chain.

The grain cleaner is equipped with some 30 square meters of sand sieve area, about ten times larger than the area currently offered by separators that have commonly been used up to now.

The purpose of thorough cleaning is not only to achieve top quality, but also to ensure safety. Dust is undesirable and dangerous - a small spark is enough to cause it to explode when dispersed in the air. Facilities such as Holland Malt must therefore present a safety analysis to the authorities to obtain an operating permit.

And apart from being the safest, Holland Malt also aims to be one of Europe's fastest and most reliable supplier of top-class malt. It is hoped that the four Buhler PRIMUS high-capacity grain cleaners of types 200/8 and 100/8, which have been installed to remove coarse as well as ?ne and low-density impurities from up to 600 metric tons of barley or 180 tons of malt per hour, will help achieve this goal.

Cleaned grain is important because it not only reduces the wear and tear on processing, conveying, and storage equipment, but also withstands extended storage periods better. A new feature of Buhler's​ PRIMUS cleaning technology is the horizontal air classi?er, which further increases the purity of the processed grain.

In addition, the new PRIMUS also offers increased cleaning capacity. Type 200/8 is capable of processing up to 200 metric tons per hour of grain, legumes, or oilseeds. The smaller PRIMUS type 100/8 has a throughput up to 100 tons per hour.

In the Holland Malt facility, the high-capacity cleaner not only cleans the brewer's barley, but also gives the ?nishing touches to the slightly sticky malt. The production lots cycle through the cleaning system several times - a new approach to processing and cleaning that Buhler believes will ?nd other applications outside of brewing.

The installation of the PRIMUS system could also save production time due to a system of material diverters. These allow materials of different particle sizes to be alternately processed without requiring any sieve changes.

This is made possible by the different perforations of the preliminary and main screens, which can be selected using two diverters. The resulting quadruple combination for so-called two-variety operation is an important feature when it comes to using a single machine to alternately clean wheat, rye, oats, barley, corn (maize), soybeans, rice, or ?eld beans.

Ef?cient two-variety operation is possible at throughput rates as low as 25 metric tons per hour, depending on the speci?c degree of cleaning required. If very high throughput rates are needed as in the case of Holland Malt, several PRIMUS units can be used.

The Holland Malt malthouse is located in the Dutch Nort Niederlande grain belt on the North Sea.