Key Technology, a member of the Duravant family of operating companies, has introduced a new concept for sorting green beans prior to snipping. This solution removes foreign material (FM) and separates easy-to-snip green beans from hard-to-snip green beans to improve snipping efficiency.
Designed for this new insertion point, Key’s integrated sorting system for pre-snipping green beans improves case recovery to reduce the processor’s cost per ton, while also producing more consistent product quality with less equipment in the downstream process.
Mark Roedl, area sales manager at Key, explained: “Processors of frozen and canned green beans have razor-thin margins. They want to lower costs while maintaining their product quality. That’s the challenge we set out to solve here.
“We applied our expertise in green bean processing and came up with this new idea – a different way to process green beans. This integrated sorting system is installed upstream of where digital sorters have always been on these lines, and it’s a game changer. Early adopters are achieving impressive results that warrant the investment.”
The integrated system combines Key’s Iso-Flo shakers, a Rotary Size Grader (RSG) and a VERYX digital sorter to separate incoming product into four streams. Two streams go to waste and two “accept” streams lead to further processing. One “accept” stream is dedicated to green beans that are difficult to snip, which go to downstream equipment that is optimised to snip this type of product. The other “accept” stream takes field-snipped and easy-to-snip green beans, and leads to downstream systems designed to manage these green beans.
Prior to this development, green bean processors have not separated incoming product into streams – instead, everything has been sent in one mass flow to the rotary snippers after upstream pre-cleaning equipment. When hard-to-snip green beans are comingled with easy-to-snip green beans, downstream systems are set to manage the hard-to-snip beans. When easy-to-snip green beans are aggressively snipped, good product is also lost. Also, when snippers get FM, it’s cut into smaller pieces, which exacerbates contamination.
Now, with Key’s VERYX integrated sorting system, processors are separating hard-to-snip green beans from easy-to-snip green beans to improve snipping efficiency, which increases case recovery and reduces the cost per case. Also, by removing FM and other plant waste before the snippers, product quality improves. All this is done with less equipment than has traditionally been required, which simplifies processes and frees up floor space.
First, an Iso-Flo shaker evenly feeds the RSG, which sizes by length and diameter to remove short and thin green beans as well as other small objects such as insects, corn cob pieces and seeds. Next, an Iso-Flo shaker feeds VERYX, spreading product for presentation to the inspection system to maximise sort accuracy.
This VERYX is equipped with top-mounted Pixel Fusion cameras and laser sensors to detect the colour, size, shape and structural property of objects. It features three-way sorting, with the “reject” stream ejecting FM such as corn cob, corn root, frogs, mice and plant stem material as well as colour defects and other waste. Hard-to-snip and easy-to-snip green beans are separated to optimised snipping downstream. After VERYX, Iso-Flo collection shakers begin conveying each stream to its next step. The integrated system is available in various widths to satisfy a range of capacity requirements.
Viewing product entirely in-air, VERYX is ideal for products with challenging shapes, such as green beans. LED lighting all around the line of sight maximises shadows. Positioning the sorter’s sensors and background away from product splatter sustains accurate inspection throughout long production cycles without operator intervention. Key’s mechanical product handling systems also enhance sanitation with open designs, fully-welded frames, stainless steel bed surfaces, oil-free drives and more.
VERYX features recipe-driven operation to ease use and achieve consistence performance day in and day out. Next-generation 4-channel cameras and high resolution laser scanners offer twice the resolution of previous sensor technology to find smaller FM and defects.
Key’s Pixel Fusion technology combines pixel-level input from multiple cameras and laser sensors, producing higher contrasts to find difficult-to-detect FM and defects. Object-based recognition facilitates advanced shape sorting algorithms as well as intelligent ejection to maximise sort accuracy and minimize false rejects.
VERYX is equipped with Key’s Information Analytics software, which allows users to analyse and share data across their enterprise via an OPCUA-compliant infrastructure. Data about the sort process and about each object flowing through the sorter, whether the data is used to make sort decisions or not, is available to reveal patterns, trends and associations to optimise processes upstream and downstream of the sorter.
