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Food & Drink
One lump or two?
Installation and operation of a Bulkflow Sugar Cooler at the sugar plant
of Brugelette in Belgium. By Jean-Marc Reichling
Bulkflow Technologies is a world leader in the indirect heating drying the sugar to below 0.04% moisture. However, the
and cooling of powder and bulk solids in many industries world- drum’s cooling section could not cope with the resulting increase
wide (chemicals, polymers, fertilisers, detergents, minerals, in temperature and was no longer able to provide the required
oilseeds, grains, food products, sugar and biosolids). In the last sugar outlet temperature of 30°C (86°F).
few years, Bulkflow has introduced this technology to the sugar According Ms. Laurence Philippart, project engineer at the
industry with great success where it has been established as a sugar plant in Brugelette, the choice of the Bulkflow Sugar
proven and effective method for cooling sugar crystals before Cooler was selected based on the following criteria:
storage and packaging. The Bulkflow system can be installed • Compact design which was easily integrated into the existing
either as a primary cooler or a secondary cooler and is readily structure
adaptable to plant retrofits. • Extremely low energy consumption of approximately 0.33 kW
The Bulkflow Heat Exchanger consists of a bank of vertical, h/ton of product.
closely spaced, hollow, stainless steel plates. The sugar flows • No air consumption eliminated the need for large fans or ducts
slowly, by gravity, between the plates in mass flow. Cooling and large, costly auxiliary equipment such as air filters or
water flows through the plates counter-current to product flow cyclones.
for higher thermal efficiency. The cooling water circuit needed for the exchanger was
The cooling occurs by heat transfer through the sugar particles uniquely designed by the plant engineers using a small portion of
and is exclusively based on conduction. Below the heat the beat washing water transported from the settling ponds to
exchanger a vibrating discharge feeder creates mass flow and the wash plant. The water is filtered and sent through a small
regulates the sugar throughput. The Bulkflow Sugar Cooling plate and frame exchanger, which cools the closed-loop water
Technology is covered by world-wide patents that are regularly system for the Bulkflow Heat Exchanger, before rejoining the
maintained. Bulkflow also benefits from a strong Research & main water stream on its way to the wash plant. With this
Development department that has produced many patent design, the Bulkflow unit provides adequate cooling of the sugar
pending applications for various bulk solid heat exchange even at the beginning of the production cycle when the water in
designs currently introduced for various key applications. the settling ponds is relatively warm.
Since Bulkflow does not use air to cool the product, the plant
Installation & Operation at Brugelette Plant in Belgium was able to realise important savings by avoiding the expensive
To achieve optimum storage or packaging of white crystal sugar,
several conditions must be fulfilled. Aspects linked to sugar The Bulkflow Heat
quality that need to be tightly controlled include residual
Exchanger for cooling
moisture, crystal size and uniformity of the sugar storage
sugar at the Brugelette
Plant in Belgium
temperature. The local ambient conditions (Temperature,
Relative Humidity) as well as the type of sugar storage silo
(unventilated, unheated, ventilated or heated) must also be
considered. In the horizontal storage silo of the sugar plant of
Brugelette (RT Group), Brugelette, Belgium, the ideal sugar
storage temperature for the local ambient conditions is
approximately 30°C (86°F).
Before start up of the plant in 2005, Brugelette completed
several modernisation projects including replacing old
centrifuges. A direct result of this change was a higher sugar
temperature at the outlet. It soon became apparent that the
existing drying and cooling system could not handle the
increased temperature. This resulted in sending sugar out to
storage at a much higher temperature than the required safe
storage temperature of 30°C (86°F).
The sugar plant of Brugelette previously used a combined
rotary drum dryer and cooler, with the first section being used as
a counter current air dryer and the second section as an air
cooler using ambient air, also in a counter-current configuration.
The existing dryer section could still meet the increased load,
10 Solids & Bulk Handling • August 2007 www.solidsandbulk.co.uk
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