Technological Innovation and Application Case of Screw Auger Feeder in Beer Raw Material Transportation

Case Background

A craft brewery initially used a flexible screw conveyor to handle grains and malt raw materials. However, the equipment long suffered from severe wear, material leakage, and high maintenance costs. The PVC delivery pipe was prone to cracks due to abrasion from the spiral drill, requiring frequent repairs with tape by staff. Despite these efforts, material accumulation and contamination risks persisted, significantly impacting production efficiency and hygiene safety.

Solution: Upgrading to the Screw Auger Feeder System

To thoroughly address these issues, the brewery introduced a high-performance Screw Auger Feeder system, with core improvements including:

• Structural Optimization: Adoption of a shaftless spiral design (for sticky and wet materials) and a stainless steel pipe body to prevent material entanglement and pipe wall wear.
• Sealing and Pressure Resistance: Enhanced shell sealing design to prevent air leakage and material spillage, supporting high-pressure dense-phase pneumatic transportation suited to the brewery’s high-pressure environment.
• Intelligent Control: Integration of variable frequency motors and sensors to achieve quantitative delivery (with precision up to 0.5%) and automated flow adjustment to match production line demands.

Implementation Results

• Efficiency Improvement: Delivery capacity was upgraded from the original equipment’s susceptibility to clogging to a stable transportation rate of 6 tons/hour (Model SC-6T), meeting the brewery’s expansion needs.
• Cost Reduction: The maintenance cycle was extended to over six months, eliminating raw material waste caused by leakage and reducing annual maintenance costs by 40%.
• Safety and Hygiene: The fully enclosed stainless steel structure complies with food-grade GMP standards, avoids cross-contamination, and allows quick switching of material formulas via the CIP online cleaning system.

Industry Insights

The Screw Auger Feeder addresses the application bottlenecks of traditional screw conveyors in the food industry through sealing design, material innovation, and intelligent control. Its modular structure (e.g., addable inlets/outlets) further supports flexible expansion of production lines, making it a preferred solution for powder and particle transportation in industries such as chemicals and pharmaceuticals.