Company: Bühler Group

Website: www.buhlergroup.com

Equipment Snapshot: Swiss Bühler Group has launched its latest optical sorter for wheat, rye, oats, grains, coffee, and pulses: the SORTEX H SpectraVision.

The SORTEX H SpectraVision is the result of Bühler’s 75 years of experience in optical sorting. It offers three key benefits for customers: unmatched ease of use, high performance, and enhanced connectivity, contributing to increased sustainability. 

Processors today must tackle an ever-increasing number of defects as a result of climate change and pesticide reduction. With its individual defect removal control, the SORTEX H enables processors to maintain sort quality with ease.  

The SORTEX H also delivers up to 50% higher reject concentrations. Supplying maximum yields is in line with Bühler’s goal to reduce energy, waste, and water by 50% in its customers’ value chains by 2025 and to develop sustainable solutions to feed the world population of 10 billion by 2050.  

Additionally, enhanced connectivity increases value for processors. Over 500 data points can be downloaded every second and sent to Bühler Insights to optimize and track performance. Processors can monitor and control their machine performance from anywhere in the world, in line with Industry 4.0 standards. Real-time tracking of sorting performance and emergency warnings are also possible thanks to the SORTEX Monitoring System. 

The SORTEX H SpectraVision is powered by brand new MerlinAi sorting algorithms. “MerlinAi is the new brain of Bühler’s SORTEX optical sorting machines,” says Melvyn Penna, product manager at Bühler. “Its advanced multi-layer sorting algorithms ensure a consistently higher yield for processors, as less good product is lost in the reject stream.”  

Superior defect reduction means accept quality can be met even with input material of a lower quality. “These all-new calibration and product tracking algorithms ensure that machine performance remains steady and high, giving processors greater flexibility,” says Penna. 

The SORTEX H SpectraVision, which is built and validated at Bühler’s London facility, has been installed at numerous customer sites around the world and is available for purchase globally. It is available with up to seven chutes. It was introduced to processors during a number of application- and region-specific webinars over the last couple of months. It was also showcased at this year’s ISF World Seed Congress in Barcelona as well as the IAOM in North America and IPACK-IMA in Milan.