Almond Huller & Sheller Facility

Firebaugh, CA

Application: Panoche Cotton Gin is redesigned to be a state of the art Almond Hulling and Shelling facility capable of processing 50 million pounds of almonds a season.

Description: Located in the heart of the San Joaquin Valley, this state of the art plant was once Cotton Gin built in 1979. After a complete overhaul the old Panoche Cotton Gin became a state of the art Almond Hulling and Shelling facility capable of processing 50 million pounds of almonds per a season. Here the almonds are cleaned, hulled, shelled and classified before being shipped to other company facilities for further processing. The automation system consists of PLC and HMI packages controlling the cleaning operation and hulling-shelling-classification systems individually. The control system can be accessed from any of 12 distributed workstations or via wireless remote.

Provided: For this new facility, ICAD provided PLC and HMI programming, process flow and P&ID documentation, control system engineering, Motor Control Center, enclosure layouts and electrical design schematics, and control panels. ICAD also provided a complete installation and start up.

Tag Count: 11,000

Motor Count: 470

Hardware: Allen-Bradley MCC consisting of 17 MCCs, 150 sections, ControlLogix 5000 PLCs and I/O modules, Allen-Bradley soft starts and VFD ranging in size from 3.0 hp to 50 hp and Compact 2400 servers

Software: RSLogix, RSLinks, Industrial Sequel, Active Factory, Citrix Metaframe, WonderWare, Autocad.

Communications: DeviceNet, EtherNet, ControlNet, Flex I/O, Thin Clients architecture.

Electrical Contractor: The Central Valley's top industrial contractor Lighthouse Electric