Potato Review

www.potatoreview.com POTATO REVIEW JULY/AUGUST 2021 57 MACHINERY Welsh company’s water usage reduces by 90% IN the last year, Welsh company Pu n Produce has seen its water usage reduce by 90% and the electricity used to wash and polish its potatoes decrease by 40%. e savings are down to a radical restructuring of its Withybush factory, which has seen four production lines replaced with two state-of-the-art lines. Pu n Produce, which is the largest supplier of Welsh produce inWales, has worked with vegetable handling equipment specialist Haith Group since the early 2000s and in 2016 Managing Director Huw omas asked the company to look at how Pu n could reduce its impact on the environment. Everything on the new lines is now automated, from receiving and grading through to progress storage and packing. Before the new lines were installed, none of the water used in the factory was recycled. All of the discharge water was removed from the site by tankers. Today, very little water leaves the site, and 90% of the water used to wash the produce is recycled. e remaining fraction has further treatment prior to discharge with the solids being incorporated into a dry cake that can be returned to land. After being received and any stones removed, the crop enters a self-cleaning washer which discharges waste water onto a course screen, removing any large particles, skin, haulm and foreign objects. e wastewater is pumped to a ner screen, which sits above a balance tank, where a mixer keeps solid matter in suspension. Technical Sales Manager Paul Ramplin, who oversaw the design of the water treatment system, said: “We start the primary settlement process in the system by pumping the soil laden water through a serpentine occulator.” is promotes agglomeration of the solids before they report into the settlement tank. e now occulated solids accumulate at the bottom of the settlement tank, where and automatic monitoring system starts a slurry removal pump at predetermined setpoints. e slurry is pumped into a storage tank that is continuously mixed to keep the slurry in suspension. A pressure pump feeds the concentrated sludge to a multi-chamber lter press, where dewatering accrues and creates a dry soil cake. It can then be returned to land in a more manageable form. e 10% of water that cannot be recycled passes through a nal biological treatment process before being discharged into the natural watercourse. Haith also helped Pu n to design all the drainage and the recycled water pumping systems to and from the factory. Huw said: “It is fantastic that we can operate more e ciently, have the capacity to handle even more produce in the future and can lower both our utility costs and impact on the environment.” Two new sweepers introduced by Bema Bema Sweepers has updated its range of municipal machines with the introduction of two newmodels. e Kommunal 580 Dual and Kommunal 450 Dual are both now available to UK customers and boast several improvements on the older model 600 Dual and 520 Dual sweepers. Available as a PPN or snow brush PPN, the main brush of the 580 Dual is now 580mm in diameter and available in several materials, including steel/PPN, steel at wire/PPN and Bema’s weed brush. It is available in six working widths ranging from 1,250mm to 2,050mm, with all sizes o ering 15%more collection container volume than the outgoing models. As well as introducing the Kommunal 580 Dual, Bema has upgraded the Kommunal 400 Dual with the launch of the Kommunal 450 Dual, which has a new, wider 450mm diameter brush and features a 480mm diameter rotary side brush. e 450 Dual is available in three working widths - 1250mm, 1400mm or 1550mm - all o ering 9%more collection container volume than the model it supersedes. Both the Kommunal 450 and 580 Dual’s feature 3D compression on all mountings.