BOSCH Projects, with a regional office in Durban, has served the global sugar industry for over 58 years and offers a service encompassing strategic planning and feasibility studies, sugar technology selection, project structuring and funding, design and engineering, project delivery and operational support and training.
That’s according to Steve Rosettenstein, the company’s Sector Director: Sugar, who added, “A critical part of our service to the sugar sector is in equipment design – from the front-end cane off-loading, cane preparation and juice extraction, through to processing, sugar drying and refining.”
He said their research and development team works closely with associate sugar consultants and technologists around the world, to develop high-performance equipment.
“Every system is designed to meet the client’s requirements for cost-efficiency and improved productivity. Although new equipment is designed, combining the latest technologies and advanced manufacturing trends, Bosch Projects incorporates tried and tested technologies favoured by clients into new designs.”
Over the past 20 years, the Bosch Projects Equipment division has developed an extensive range of sugar processing equipment, which includes its patented chainless diffuser and continuous vacuum pan.
Other best-selling equipment includes rotary juice screens, juice heaters and clarifiers, cane preparation equipment, long tube evaporators and entrainment separators. The company has also recently sold sugar dryers, refined sugar conditioning silos, continuous vertical massecuite reheaters vertical continuous crystallisers and batch pans.
“The patented Bosch Projects Continuous Vacuum Pan (CVP) design has become the preferred system of many of the world’s biggest sugar processing groups,” said Neil du Plessis, Sector Manager, Sugar Equipment. “When supplying a CVP for C boilings, we recommend to clients that we provide the full C station, which includes the CVP, the continuous vertical crystalliser and the continuous massecuite reheater. By offering the entire system, we guarantee optimum performance of the total C station exhaustion.”
Du Plessis said another system that had been well-received by the sugar sector is the vertically orientated Bosch Projects reheater. “With significant performance benefits over conventional massecuite reheaters, that are horizontally orientated. The major advantage of the vertical reheater design is that massecuite rises as it is heated and thus follows natural convection tendencies. This results in favourable plug flow through the heater, thereby minimising the purity rise across the unit.
“Horizontal reheaters tend to have over-heated channels of massecuite near the top of the vessel and static cool areas at the bottom. This causes short-circuiting of massecuite inside the reheater, reducing the unit’s efficiency,” he said.
The company recently supplied and commissioned six vertical massecuite reheaters around the globe and has submitted proposals for another four units to clients looking to upgrade their current design to the Bosch Projects reheater. These units are fabricated from stainless steel which minimises maintenance costs and reduces the need to treat the heating water.
Clients are offered either a full turnkey installation or the stand-alone equipment can be supplied.
The company has also developed the Lamella Clarifier, especially for the sugar industry, to satisfy demand for short retention clarification. Although various lamella clarifier systems are well-established in water treatment applications, this technology is new in sugar processing and is especially effective for juice, syrup and refinery phosphotation clarification.
The Bosch Projects system, which utilises a series of inclined plates for fast, effective particle separation and settling, is much smaller than conventional clarifiers and substantially reduces liquor retention times.
The company said the design of this new settling Lamella Clarifier reduces the size and footprint of conventional juice clarifiers by approximately 30%, significantly lowering capital investment costs. Important features include short residence times, reduced sucrose degradation and improved turbidity removal. Other claimed benefits are efficiency and minimal moving parts, which requires lower maintenance.
The syrup clarifier is similar in design to the lamella juice version, except that it operates as a flotation clarifier, as opposed to settling. This system can be switched on and off as desired when syrup qualities are low and it can be easily installed inside an existing factory, due to its compact size.
The Bosch Projects team works closely with its technology partners and fabricators globally, to ensure manufacture of all equipment adheres to stringent international quality standards and exact design specifications.
The company has an extensive network of offices in Africa, South and Central America and the United Kingdom. The company also has technology partners in the South East Asian region and the USA.
