US 5,699,724 A · Cleaning and sorting bulk material

Abstract

For cleaning foodstuffs in the form of a bulk material, such as cereal grains, rice grains, soybeans, sunflower seeds, coffee beans, and the like, there is provided an optical sorting device (24, 24a, 24a') subsequent to a precleaning system (6), which enables sorting on the basis of color and/or size and/or shape. Each particle of the bulk material is allocated to a particle class determined by parameters and conveyed on a supporting surface transporting the bulk material to a reception area (43, 44, 45) for the respective particle class. To clean the bulk material, impurities and bad particles are sorted out of the product, with the product being partitioned into classes, if required.

Claims29

Dependent claims

A facility for treating particulate food material containing impurities comprising

a precleaning section for precleaning said food material by removing impurities which differ distinctly from said particulate food material,
a first cleaning section for selecting impurities from the precleaned food material comprising at least one optical sorting system including
optical detecting means for detecting at least one characteristic property of the group of color, size and shape of the particles of said food material, said detecting means being mounted facing a passage area where said material is passing by in a flow direction,
comparator means for comparing said detected characteristic with characteristics of acceptable food particles, said comparator means being connected to said detecting means, and
partitioning means for partitioning said food material at least in impurities and acceptable food particles, said partitioning means being connected to said comparator means.

2 more elements

Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.

Cleaning and sorting bulk material

Life of this patent

Cleaning and sorting bulk material

Life of this patent

Abstract

Claims29