Method for cleaning and sorting bulk material
AssigneeBuhler AG
InventorsArthur Wettstein, Gilbert Moret
Life of this patent
Estimating the term…
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.
Claims18
A method for treating unhulled particulate food material containing impurities comprising the steps of:
- precleaning said food material by removing impurities which differ distinctly from said particulate food material;
- first cleaning for selecting still remaining impurities from the precleaned food material including a step of optically detecting at least one characteristic property selected from the group consisting of color, size and shape of particles of said unhulled particulate food material, said optically detecting step being accomplished subsequent to said precleaning step and prior to hulling of the unhulled particulate food material;
- comparing said detected characteristic property with characteristics of acceptable particles of the food material;
- and
- partitioning said food material at least into impurities and acceptable particles of the food material, said partitioning step providing sorting results upon the particulate food material in accordance with detections made in said optically detecting step, wherein the particulate food material remains unhulled after said steps of first cleaning, optically detecting and partitioning;
- and
- wherein said optically detecting step comprises steps of establishing red, green and blue references against which color the particles of the food material are to be compared in said comparing step for a measurement of color, establishing coordinate dimensions of length and width against which size the particles of the food material are to be compared in said comparing step, and introducing a learning procedure with reference to shapes against which the particles of the food material are to be compared from measurement of shape in said comparing step.
A method for treating unhulled particulate food material containing impurities comprising the steps of:
- precleaning said food material by removing impurities which differ distinctly from said particulate food material;
- first cleaning for selecting still remaining impurities from the precleaned food material including a step of optically detecting at least one characteristic property selected from the group consisting of color, size and shape of particles of said unhulled particulate food material, said optically detecting step being accomplished subsequent to said precleaning step and prior to hulling of the unhulled particulate food material;
- comparing said detected characteristic property with characteristics of acceptable particles of the food material;
- and
- partitioning said food material at least into impurities and acceptable particles of the food material said partitioning step providing concurrently sorting functions upon the particulate food material in accordance with detections of said optically detecting step, wherein the particulate food material remains unhulled after said steps of first cleaning, optically detecting and partitioning;
- and
- wherein said optically detecting step comprises steps of establishing red, green and blue references against which color the particles of the food material are to be compared in said comparing step for a measurement of color, establishing coordinate dimensions of length and width against which size the particles of the food material are to be compared in said comparing step, and introducing a learning procedure with reference to shapes against which the particles of the food material are to be compared from measurement of shape in said comparing step.
A method for treating unhulled rice particles accompanied by impurities, comprising the steps of:
- providing at least two classes of rice having different characteristics;
- optically detecting at least characteristics of said rice and said impurities, said optical detecting step being accomplished prior to hulling of the unhulled rice particles and comprising color references against which said rice particles are compared by color measurement of said unhulled rice particles;
- sorting said unhulled rice particles according to said optically detected characteristics into at least a first portion and a second portion;
- providing bin means for separating each of said portions and conveying each of said first and second portions of the unhulled rice particles into a respective bin means, wherein the rice particles remain unhulled after said steps of optically detecting and sorting;
- and
- providing means for dehulling and subsequently conveying only one of said portions of unhulled rice from its respective bin means to said dehulling means.
Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.