British plant engineering causes a stir in Japan 08 November 2013

British process and automation expertise has helped Nissui, one of Japan's largest seafood producers, to cut white sauce production time by 83%.

PDX reactor (industrial steam cooker) technology, from Peterborough-based Olympus Automation, produces the sauce in a single-stage, so slashing energy consumption, while also reducing cleaning between batches.

Previously, Nissui purchased up to 20,000 tonnes of Béchamel sauce a year from a third-party manufacturer, but the firm wanted to bring production in-house, initially to its Tokyo plant, to improve efficiency and cut costs.

The conventional cooking plant process used by its supplier used three stages and took 100 minutes to produce 1,000kgs of sauce – followed by a further 20 minutes of downtime per batch to remove burn-on contamination.

Changing to a PDX Reactor – effectively a fluid processing system that can homogenise, mix, heat and pump simultaneously, using steam-generated supersonic vapour flow and shockwaves – promised massive reductions in process times.

Control and monitoring of the PDX Reactor is handled by a Mitsubishi Electric FX3 compact PLC and Mitsubishi HMI, which provides an entire control console on a single screen.

Improvements cited by Nissui include processing time reduced to 17 minutes for 1,200kg of the sauce, as well as the associated reduced operating costs, due to energy savings.

Surprisingly, the firm also reports improved mixing, which has allowed a 20% reduction in flour from the recipe. On current volumes, Nissui is saving 300 tonnes of flour and approximately 2.1 million litres of milk per annum.

Brian Tinham

Related Companies
Mitsubishi Electric Europe BV
OAL Group

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