Citrus Pulp Recovery

The growing interest in citrus pulp, or frozen, stabilized juice sacs, stems from the rapid influx of high quality citrus juices and juice added beverages into the market. Juice sacs have been recovered for many years and it has not been until the past few years that this practice evolved into a sophisticated technology. Paper published with permission.

Cogeneration and the Citrus Industry

The purpose of this presentation is to acquaint you with cogeneration, provide techniques for quickly assessing its possible application at your facility, and provide direction for implementation, if appropriate. Cogeneration is the sequential production of steam and electricity from the same energy source. It is sequential in that the energy first produces electricity and then useful thermal energy. This application is called a topping cycle because the power production precedes the thermal application. It is the one that should be of most interest in the citrus industry, and the one that will be addressed herein. The other configuration, the bottoming cycle, is where the energy source for power generation is from heat recovered from a high temperature thermal process application such as often exists in the metal processing industry. Paper published with permission.

Automated Inspection/Classification of Fruits and Vegetables

Rapid advances in the electronic industry have generated high interest in automated grading technology tor fresh fruits and vegetables. During the last two decades, packaging and container handling have become significantly mechanized. However, sorting remains a labor intensive operation in many fresh produce industries. The amount of fruit removed can be quite significant. In Florida citrus packing, an average of 30% of the fruit is diverted to processing. Such high removal rates coupled with limited grading tables areas can diminish human grading performance and the production capacity of a packing plant. Furthermore, the cullage removal rates will probably increase with further mechanization of harvesting and field handling. Paper published with permission.

An Improved Alternating Current Motor

This paper describes a new approach to alternating current motor design which overcomes many of the disadvantages of conventional designs. In order to place this new design in perspective, the history and performance of conventional motors will be briefly reviewed first. Paper published with permission.

Flow and Tank Inventory Measurement

The need to track inventory and material transfers in processing plants is almost universal. That is part of the reason we were asked to participate in this conference. Because, most of our experience is in industries other than citrus processing. We agreed to write this paper expecting that the experience of other processing industries could be useful. Someone called this a cross pollination experiment. A common denominator in industry, indeed life, is money. We may confuse each other with terms such as Brix, degrees API, yield, etc., but dollars we understand. The need to know how many pounds of juice produced and stored is analogous to measuring the gallons of gasoline produced and stored. In both cases we ultimately need to know the value of product produced per dollar of raw materials consumed and the value of the current product inventory. We will review the need for flow and inventory measurements, the current citrus industry practices and potential opportunities for improved measurements by using currently available proven technology. Paper published with permission.

Citrus Peel Dryer Control System

In most large citrus processing plants world-wide, the peel is made into cattle feed. The peel is shredded, mixed with lime, allowed to react, and pressed. The liquid from the pressing is evaporated and recycled into the peel or sold as molasses. The press cake is dried in single pass, direct fired rotary dryers with co-current flow of heating gasses and product. Paper published with permission.