A factory trial to evaluate different designs of shredder-hammer tips

Sugarcane preparation is achieved with a hammer mill termed a shredder. The disintegration of the structure of the cane billet enables the subsequent milling process to separate some of the dissolved sucrose by a combination of further mechanical preparation, squeezing and washing. Better preparation leads to increased sugar extraction, measured as (Pol %) bagasse and lower quantities of final moisture in bagasse. Previous reports indicate that existing shredders produce high levels of preparation but require greater power/energy usage and incur high maintenance expenditures. Two factory trials, each spanning 3 weeks, were conducted at Macknade Mill during the 2021 production season to evaluate the effect of the design of the shredder-hammer tip on shredder performance. The two shredder-tip designs investigated were wedge tips (conventional) and flat tips (alternative). The key objective for this trial was to determine which tip type performs better under a range of different shredder parameters including first-stage pressures, feeding, first-mill extraction, POC performance, turbine and rotor speeds, and power efficiencies. The conventional wedge tips performed the best.