Drying Pomace Wet Cakes
Pomace left over from juicing or dewatering is often considered low-value waste. Here’s how Bepex helps transform “waste” pomace into high-value protein products.
A Complete Solution to Transform Pomace into Profits
For years, processors have considered pomace to be waste, at best a low-value byproduct only sold to local farmers as fertilizer or wet feed. But where others see only waste pulp, Bepex spots profits. Pomace can be a sustainable, shelf-stable source of plant protein and fiber for production of high-protein food and animal feed ingredients.
A Complete Solution
Pomace contains excess water. And that requires a lot of energy to dry out. Bepex offers a total solution to ensure consistent feeds, mechanically wring water from the pomace before drying, and dry the non-pumpable wet cakes in powder or particles. That ensures improved efficiency from front-end pressing to final drying; improving product quality, lowering costs, and reducing emissions.
More Control Over Quality
Extracting quality proteins and fiber from pomace is tough. They’re delicate and easily damaged in drying and processing. And end-users often have their own functional requirements. Our PCX flash dispersion dryer offers superior control over drying, particle size, and other product attributes to fine tune protein characteristics for the specific end-use application.
New Applications. An Experienced PartnerBepex offers decades of experience helping processors find new applications and markets for “waste” material. Our Process Development Center works with you to define, select, and quantify the best technology to meet your specific product requirements and project outcomes.
Transforming Pomace into Profits with Bepex
Drying
Drying pomace without damaging its protein and fiber content is a challenge. Led by the innovative PCX flash dispersion dryer, Bepex offers the industry’s broadest range of drying technologies. Bepex dryers focus on providing superior control over drying, lowering operating costs, and providing high capacity in a compact footprint. The result is a superior product and better cap ex return than available with traditional drying technologies.
Coarse Grinding
Pomace pulp can include a variety of materials – skins, seeds, stems and more. Our RP Disintegrator grinds pomace to ensure consistent feed size, improve processing efficiency and yield, and to expose more surface area to speed drying. Built and supported in the USA, Bepex coarse grinding systems are backed by a century of experience and proven performance.
Mechanical Separation
Mechanically pressing pomace before drying wrings out excessive water, reducing the drying time and utilities required. The Bepex S-Press set the industry standard for mechanical dewatering. Its compact footprint, sanitary design, and easy cleaning make it widely used in protein recovery and processing.
Pasteurization
Removing bacteria and other pathogens from pomace adds additional value to the product – especially in food ingredient applications. The Bepex Solidaire offers complete control over heat transfer and time, sterilizing contaminants while minimizing changes to product quality.
RP Disintegrator
The RP Disintegrator is designed for grinding, delumping, pureeing, and homogenizing. Its design provides operational versatility including quick cleaning, change overs, and maintenance. It grinds wet and dry materials to produce solid particles, fine purees, or pastes.
PCX
The PCX dispersion flash dryer processes high-moisture materials including non-pumpable wet cakes, pastes and slurries into a fine powder or small granules. No extra dilution is required for processing, meaning faster drying, less energy use, and lower emissions.
S-Press
The S-Press is designed for mechanical dewatering, juicing, or solvent removal. It squeezes liquid from feeds to lower costs of drying or other downstream processing. Its compact footprint, sanitary design, and easy cleaning make it widely used in food processing.
Solidaire
The Solidaire thin layer paddle dryer offers the highest heat transfer coefficient available. Process dry or wet solids, liquids, slurries, cakes or pastes more efficiently, with more control, at lower cost. Solidaire applications include drying, devolatilizing, reacting, cooling, and crystallizing.
Improve Processing Sustainability
Innovation in Waste Reduction and Energy Conservation
At Bepex, sustainability isn’t a buzz word.It’s a corporate commitment…and a point of view.Where others see waste and other useless byproducts, we see the opportunity to create new, value-added products.Where others shrug off water, energy and floor space usage as just a cost of doing business, we obsess on ways to reduce them – improving both profitability and sustainability.Where some see sustainability as a way to keep stakeholders satisfied, we see it as a path to feeding the world more efficiently, with less long-term impact on the environment.And for Bepex, it’s more than just words, it’s a series of corporate initiatives designed to ensure that we help create sustainable solutions and more value for our customers.
Explore Our Resources
Process Development
Feasibility
All new inquiries begin with a feasibility study. These studies aim to provide preliminary insights into the viability of a commercial process. Using as little as 100 grams of material, we can begin early process design, develop plans for pilot-testing and/or confirmation, and begin providing early economic estimates. Our experience across our wide range of technologies gives us a unique ability to provide quick feedback on the feasibility of your process.
Development
From our learnings, we’ll begin the process development work. The primary work in this phase takes place in the form of pilot-scale testing in our Process Development Center. Our pilot tests look a bit different than what you may have experienced in the past. Each test is designed to measure the system performance and feasibility rather than that of any single machine.
Each system is custom assembled for each test. Our goal is to provide as much of a pilot-scale simulation as possible while gathering scale-up data to deliver on commercial capacities. When a certain technology proves ineffective, we’ll draw from our range of options to determine if there is a better fit. The Process Development Center is our sandbox to build, test, and revise to ensure we get every detail right.
Budget Evaluation
With a successful pilot simulation completed, we now have everything we need to scale up and provide proposals for capital equipment with included performance guarantees.
System Design And Build
After receipt of the purchase order, we begin with both equipment and system engineering. Each proprietary technology we sell is custom-designed and built per application. We do not have any off-the-shelf units. At this stage, your exact system begins to take shape, including auxiliary equipment, process flow diagrams, process and instrumentation diagrams, safety provisions, and more.
Commissioning
After delivery and installation of your new system, Bepex will provide a mechanical check to ensure everything is placed according to plan. This is followed shortly thereafter by system commissioning. This is where our pilot-scale simulations become invaluable, as our team of application engineers, controls technicians, and sales engineers begin working with your team to successfully bring your system online.
Support
At this point, you’re up and running at rate, producing a quality product, but our work doesn’t stop there.
Following commissioning, Bepex remains a reliable partner, providing quality OEM parts, immediate field service, process optimization, training, system troubleshooting, and more. We have consistently had high customer retention rates, and we believe it is due in large part to our comprehensive approach to serving our customers long after the original sale.
Improving Pomace Processing and Profitability
Learn more about improving pomace processing and increasing profits while enhancing production sustainability. Reach out to a Bepex processing expert.
