Continuous extraction plants from BMA have two major benefits for the beet sugar industry. The tower’s slowly rotating conveying blades move tightly compressed beet cossettes to the top, extracting sugar molecules from the beet cells. The result: low-temperature, high-purity raw juice with a high dry substance content. And the plant operator also benefits, in terms of both technology and energy management.
The extraction tower from BMA relies on an operating principle that goes back a long way. Initially developed for the extraction of oil seeds, the tower’s design and process technology were adapted in the 1940s to permit the processing of beet pulp. While early plants were supplied as twin-column towers, the first single-column tower was built in 1950. Demand for this model took off immediately: within just 18 months, BMA had built an impressive 28 towers. Back then, one tower would take about eight weeks to manufacture – and 90 t of iron and steel.
Today’s extraction towers from BMA have come a long way. Their strengths include highly variable throughput (70 – 120 %), a state-of-the-art torque control system, and extraction rates of up to 99 %. With cutting-edge automation and data communications systems, the tower has become part of the Internet of things. Its success in the market, however, is unchanged. In the past six months alone, customers in China, Russia and Poland have placed orders with BMA for extraction plants with a total capacity of 40,000 t/d. Today, extraction towers from BMA can be found in almost all beet sugar-producing countries.