Production

Production process- Starch

FCRs

1
• Feeding 4
• Magnetic trap Description of production process Machine & storage required
hopper Dry sieve Purification • Sand cyclone
• Dry Sieve 1 Dry sieving and paddle washing • Dry sieve (dry washing)
• Conveyor belts Process starts with dry washing and counter-current paddle washing to remove dirt, outer • Paddle washing machine (washing)
2 bark and some of the inner peel layer. • Peeler- If not incorporated in the
• Paddle washing 2 5 • Centri-sieves
Paddle 3 step paddle washing machine
Machine • Hydro-cyclones
Washing screening • Fork lift
• Peeler • Centri-peeler
3 Chopping and crushing • Cutting machine
The clean roots are then chopped using a cutting machines and feed into the rasper to crush • Rasper
• Cutting machine 6
3 the tissues. The rasper raptures the tissues and releases the starch granules into the • Confluence pool
• Rasper Chopping • Centri-peeler
Dewatering suspension forming the starch milk
& Crushing
4 Purification • Magnetic trap
• Confluence The starch milk is passed through a magnetic trap and sand cyclone to remove any • Sand cyclone
pool Cassava contaminants (metallic and sand particles)
Starch
milk Wet Cake residue
5 3 steps screening • Centri-sieves
1st step: The starch milk is then passed through several stages of centri-sieves. The • Hydro-cyclones (3-4 units)
centrisieves uses a combination of centrifugal force and fine mesh sieves to separate the • Centri-peeler
7 6 starch granules from contaminating elements such as fibre and protein .
Flash drying • Flash dryer 2nd step: The milk existing the final centrisieve is passed into a bank of hydrocyclone units.
• Air heater The hydrocyclone provides a further stage of purification and also concentrate the milk
• Heat exchanger upwards from 2-3% to approx. 15%.
3rd step: The concentrated pure starch milk is passed to a centri-peeler unit which provides a
final stage of washing the starch to achieve the highest level of purity followed by rapid
dewatering where moisture content is reduced to approx. 32-34% and the wet cake is
discharged to the flash dryer. This mechanical dewatering is important as it saves the energy
8 9 10 11
by reducing the amount of water that must be evaporated in the flash dryer.
Milling Screening HQCF Packaging Storage
7 Flash drying • Flash dryer
The wet cake is dried via the flash dryer machine which uses indirectly heated air stream to • Air heater
reduce the moisture content to 10-12% within 1-2 seconds. The air stream rising within the • Heat exchanger
flash dryer contains a mixture of dry starch particles and hot air. The air stream is therefore
• (70-80) mesh • Packing machine fed into cyclone units to separate the air stream from the dry powder (using cyclone action).
• Hammer mill
screen • Conveyor belt Large units can have hot air recycling to improve energy efficiency. The dry powder is then
passed through heat exchangers and cooled to 30 ° C before emerging from the dryer.
8 Milling and screening • Hammer mill
9 The dry powder emerging from the flash dryer is passed through a hammer mill and screened • Fine sieving
Core Input to give a particle size of 0.18mm
By-product Cleaning Core Drying process Storage process
/ output Machine/storage
process Processing
required
10 Packaging & storage • Packing machine
11 The final product can be held in silos or sent directly to the bagging machines and then stored • Conveyor belt
in the warehouse. • Fork lift