Pressure applied to accumulating block of hops by hop flow rate

摘要

An assembly compresses a quantity of loose, bulk solids esp. hops into rectangular block. The hops are surrendered to a chamber in which they are submitted to pre-determined pressure. The novelty is that: (a) the press assembly has a hop inlet and a hopper located between a fruit supply conveyer and a holding container, from which a pre-determined quantity of hops is discharged to the fruit supply container; (b) a measuring unit is located at the hop inlet, registering the quantity of hops discharged to the holding container; (c) a moving wall press (9) maintains a constant pressure on the hops held in the pressure chamber (7); (d) a measuring system which registers the pressure in the hydraulic system to the press; (e) a control assembly which combines the data derived from (d) with those from (b), and uses the result to control the flow of hops to produce a constant density within the compressed block. Also claimed is a process for compression the hops to a block of uniform density.