Food Screw Conveyor

What is Food Screw Conveyor?

The design of Food Screw Conveyor  focuses on meeting strict hygiene standards. According to the structure and shell form, common types include tubular, U-shaped groove (with cover) and shaftless screw conveyors. They can handle everything from fine powders (such as flour, starch), granular materials (such as sugar, grains), and even some sticky or wet semi-finished products. The conveying capacity of the equipment varies according to the size of the model and the characteristics of the material, and can meet the needs of precise supply of small amounts of ingredients to continuous large-scale transfer; the conveying distance of a single machine is usually within a few dozen meters, which is suitable for production sites of different sizes and layouts, and is an indispensable part of the food material handling process.

What are the types of Food Screw Conveyor?

Food Screw Conveyor usually tends to choose stainless steel tubular screw conveyors or U-shaped groove screw conveyors with covers. In addition, in terms of structural form, shaftless screw conveyors also have obvious advantages when handling certain specific foods. Its structural characteristics and application requirements can be mainly divided into the following types:

Material: Mainly 304 stainless steel or 316L stainless steel. 304 stainless steel is a general food-grade material, while 316L stainless steel has stronger corrosion resistance due to the molybdenum element, and is particularly suitable for food transportation environments with high salt, acid or chloride content.

Surface treatment: High-standard polishing (such as mirror polishing) is usually performed to ensure that the surface is smooth and non-porous, not easy to breed bacteria, easy to thoroughly clean and disinfect, and reduce material residue.

Corrosion resistance and durability: It can resist the corrosion of acids, alkalis, salts and other substances commonly seen in food processing, and at the same time has sufficient mechanical strength and wear resistance to ensure long-term stable operation of the equipment.

Sealing: The circular tube body can completely enclose the material, effectively prevent external dust, insects and other pollutants from entering, and prevent material leakage and dust spillage, ensuring the cleanliness of food and environmental hygiene.

Compact structure: Small footprint, especially when vertical or large-angle lifting is required, it can effectively utilize space.

Flexible installation: The pipeline structure enables it to adapt to a variety of spatial layouts and conveying paths.

Easy to clean and maintain: The cover above the trough can be opened or disassembled, so that the internal spiral blades and the inside of the trough are exposed, which is convenient for manual cleaning, inspection, maintenance and removal of material residues, which is its main advantage over the tube type.

A certain degree of sealing: The cover and sealing strip can also effectively reduce dust and material leakage, but its sealing is usually not as good as the tube conveyor.

Wide applicability: It can handle a wider range of food materials, including some materials that may have a certain humidity, and is not prone to blockage.

Anti-winding and anti-blocking: The core advantage is that it can effectively handle food materials with high viscosity, high humidity, easy to entangle or contain fiber, such as dough, jam, chocolate paste, wet starch residue, vegetable waste, meat residue, etc., greatly reducing the frequency of blockage and cleaning.

Reduce dead corners: The design without a central shaft also reduces the dead corners where materials accumulate, further improves the hygiene level, and is easier to clean.

Flexible structure: Some shaftless designs use flexible spirals that can adapt to certain curved conveying paths.

What are the advantages of Food Screw Conveyor?

Food Screw Conveyor plays an indispensable role in food processing and production. Its design and functions focus on meeting the strict requirements of the food industry for hygiene, safety and efficiency, so it has many significant advantages:

Ensure food hygiene and safety: This is the primary advantage of Food Screw Conveyor. The equipment is usually made of food-grade stainless steel (such as 304 or 316L) and polished to a high standard, making the surface smooth and non-porous, which greatly inhibits the growth of bacteria and is easy to clean and disinfect thoroughly. Whether it is a tubular or U-shaped groove design with a cover, it can achieve highly closed transportation, effectively prevent external contaminants (such as dust and insects) from entering, and avoid cross-contamination of materials during transportation, fundamentally ensuring the quality and safety of food.

Closed transportation, control of dust and loss: Food materials, especially powdered materials, are prone to dust and loss during transportation. The fully enclosed or highly enclosed structure of Food Screw Conveyor effectively solves this problem. It can completely isolate the material in the conveying pipeline, significantly reduce dust spillage, improve the working environment, and reduce the difficulty of cleaning. At the same time, this airtightness also minimizes the spillage and waste of materials, improving production efficiency and raw material utilization.

Easy cleaning and maintenance: Although the high airtightness makes cleaning slightly complicated, many Food Screw Conveyors are designed to be easy to disassemble and clean. Some models (especially U-shaped grooves with covers and some modular tube conveyors) are designed with quick disassembly structures or inspection ports to facilitate manual internal cleaning. Advanced Food Screw Conveyors can be designed to be compatible with CIP systems to achieve automatic cleaning without disassembly, greatly improving cleaning efficiency and hygiene standards.

Parameters of Food Screw Conveyor

What are the applications of Food Screw Conveyor?

As a material handling equipment that meets the high standards of hygiene in the food industry, Food Screw Conveyor has a wide range of application scenarios, spanning the transportation needs of various food forms. It mainly pushes various food materials forward in a closed or semi-closed trough through the internal rotating spiral blades. This type of conveyor is often used for the precise supply of bulk food raw materials. Whether it is to accurately and stably convey powdered raw materials such as flour, sugar, starch in large silos, or granular foods such as coffee beans, grains, and condiments to the next process such as mixers, grinders, or packaging machines, the Food Screw Conveyor can ensure the continuous and controlled supply of materials, providing support for the automation and continuity of food production. Secondly, it plays an important role in the transfer and distribution of food materials between processes. In complex food processing processes, the Food Screw Conveyor can transfer semi-finished or processed materials from one device to another. This includes conveying mixed ingredients to baking lines, conveying ground spices to dispensing machines, or conveying fruit and vegetable scraps to dehydration equipment. Its airtightness is particularly important in these transfer processes, effectively preventing the materials from being secondary contaminated by the external environment and reducing dust and material spillage. In addition, the device is also suitable for the lifting of specific food materials. When the production line needs to lift food materials from a lower position to a higher storage tank, reactor or processing equipment, the inclined or vertical Food Screw Conveyor can achieve efficient and hygienic material lifting and effectively utilize the vertical space. For some food materials with high viscosity, high humidity or easy winding characteristics, such as dough, jam, wet starch residue or food waste, the shaftless screw conveyor with its unique centerless shaft design can effectively avoid blockage and winding, ensuring the smooth conveying of these special materials and the convenience of subsequent cleaning.

Food Screw Conveyor Cases

Food Screw Conveyor plays a vital role in the production and processing of various foods, and its application covers multiple links from raw material processing to final product packaging. Its main function is to safely and hygienically convey food materials in various forms. For example, in food processing plants, screw conveyors are often used to transport bulk food raw materials from trucks or storage containers to the preliminary processing area. Receive and convey wheat, corn, rice, soybeans, coffee beans, etc. into silos or cleaning equipment. From bulk containers to refining or dissolving tanks. Accurately conveying various types of powdered or granular food additives such as starch, spices, leavening agents, flour to mixing or batching systems. In various links of food production lines, screw conveyors are used for continuous transfer of materials in different forms. In flour processing, flour at different grinding stages is conveyed to the next process, such as screening, mixing or packaging. Conveying candy granules, chopped nuts, puffed foods, dehydrated vegetables, etc. Certain specially designed screw conveyors (such as shaftless screw conveyors or belt screws) can effectively convey high-viscosity or easily entangled materials such as jam, chocolate paste, dough, minced meat, wet starch residue, etc. Screw conveyors can also provide a stable material flow, making them very useful in the batching process where precise control of ingredients is required. Convey a variety of powdered or granular raw materials into the mixer in preset proportions to achieve automated batching and ensure the accuracy of product formulas. In the final product packaging process, screw conveyors can be used to transport finished materials from the production line to the packaging machine or bulk container. This ensures a continuous supply of materials and improves packaging efficiency. In summary, Food Screw Conveyor, with its hygienic, airtight, stable and easy-to-clean features, is widely used in all aspects of the food industry and is an important part of ensuring food production continuity, product quality and sanitation and safety.

Food Screw Conveyor has become an important part of the food production line due to its unique design in material transportation. This type of equipment can complete the stable transfer of powdered, granular or certain special forms of food in a relatively closed environment. Its structural characteristics and operating mode enable it to show practical application performance in ensuring that food remains clean during transportation, reducing material loss and adapting to different transportation paths.