Emptying Malt extract in drums

[chemico_imported]

In our plant, we're encountering this problem of malt extract left-over in drums which weigh to about 1.75-1.85 kgs. per drum. Malt extract is contained in drums at 300 kgs. net capacity. Despite having to tilt the drums over a certain period of time to drain the content, still a substantial portion is left inside. Do you know of a better way of extracting the malt extract inside the drum. Malt extract is used in food application process so hygiene is important to us. Currently we're losing about 3 MT/month on drum left-overs. I'm not targetting a zero loss figure here, but a 50% reduction in the left-over would be a great help to us. Thanks a lot.

 

[RobWard]

Have you condsidered centrifuging the drum inside a catch-tank?

"I love deadlines. I love the whooshing noise they make as they go past." Douglas Adams

 

[chemico_imported]

Thank you for your reply Robward. My answer to your query is no. We haven't considered centrifuging the drums yet. How exactly will go about it? Are you doing this practise in your plant also? How effective is this method?

 

[pso311]

Way outside the box...2 foot spatula. Perhaps with a cupped (L-shaped) head that could be swept around the walls and then pulled into the collection tank?

Perhaps heat the extract to make more viscous? I don't know much about food products.

 

[tomcat2]

This is most likely too late but...
We dump food grade materials from drums and we also fill drums for other packaging plants. Most all of our materials are fairly high viscosity and are handled chilled or semi-frozen. We utilize two food grade poly bag liners in steel food grade lined drums and a bag wringer (two SS rollers). The wringer is mounted next to, and feeds into, the drum dumping station to wring-out the liners and recover as much material as possible. We only wring-out the inner liners and reject any leaking liners to maintain ingredients integrity.