Optimizing a Growing Opportunity

September 1st, 2021

By: Martin Charlton Communications

Canola has been big news in Saskatchewan this year with the announcements of three canola crushing plants that are to be constructed in the province.

Amanpal Bilkhu, P.Eng.

Making the most of what he is working with is at the core of Amanpal Bilkhu’s work. Today, he uses data to ascertain how to gain improvements. As a kid growing up in southeast Regina, he relied on his personal awareness to determine what he should study at the University of Saskatchewan.

Bilkhu was — and still is — enthusiastic about solving problems and has an aptitude for chemistry and math. Many engineers can say the same about themselves.

“If you put all of that into a blender, you come out with engineering as a career,” said Bilkhu, P.Eng., whose knowledge of physical principles, mechanics, and chemistry could help him to design a better blender — if he weren’t already hard at work for Cargill.

No blender is required in the work he does for the international provider of food, agriculture and risk management products and services, but Bilkhu has many other types of equipment and processes to consider as the team he is part of extracts an oil the world desires while also producing meal to feed livestock.

Expanding Saskatchewan’s capacity

Canola has been big news in Saskatchewan this year with the announcements of three canola crushing plants that are to be constructed in the province.
One of those new canola crushing plants announced for Saskatchewan is to be built by Cargill in the Regina area. The other two are being constructed by Viterra at Regina and Ceres in the southeast.

Canola is one of the country’s most widely grown crops with the Canola Council of Canada counting 43,000 farmers producing about 20 million tonnes of canola a year on approximately 20 million acres of farmland. Saskatchewan accounts for more than half of that production, the provincial explains.
Saskatchewan currently processes about 40 to 45 per cent of the canola it produces at a value of $3 billion. Processing even more canola transforms the commodity, but also the agricultural economy of the province. Canola processing currently represents the largest portion of Saskatchewan’s value-added sector, so expanding that processing capacity offers the province its most significant potential for growth for that sector.

The Saskatchewan government has a goal in its Growth Plan to crush 75 per cent of the canola produced in the province by 2030, which would add an estimated $2 billion in additional value-added revenue.

To encourage investment in canola processing, the provincial government has promoted its tax environment and credits, access to utilities, export record, agri-food research cluster as well as the province’s technical and engineering resources as part of Saskatchewan’s valued labour force.
These three plants announced in 2021 would join the four already being operated in Saskatchewan by – from north to south – Bunge at Nipawin, Cargill at Clavet and Louis Dreyfus Company (LDC) as well as Richardson at Yorkton (which announced this year it will be doubling its processing capacity.)

Processing at a crush plant

On a broad scale, every crushing plant extracts the oil in a very similar way, but each competitor would have its own fine-tuned details of the process.

The canola seed brought to these plants is crushed to release the oil inside. Before it is crushed, the seed is conditioned in preparation for the manual expellers, which release the first two-thirds of the oil content in the seed. The final one-third comes from washing the solids that remain after pressing.

After the oil is extracted, it must be refined. That oil is primarily used for cooking, but can also be a component of biofuel. The meal that remains is turned into high-protein animal feed.

As a cooking oil, canola is considered to be versatile, affordable and healthy, having zero trans-fat and the lowest amount of saturated fat of all common cooking oils, the Canola Council of Canada states.

Maximum team performance

Construction on Cargill’s second plant is expected to begin in early 2022 with the plant going into operation in 2024.Bilkhu has been working at its first, located at Clavet just outside of Saskatoon, since 2012. His start with Cargill was as a project engineer, brought on for the commissioning, build and start-up of a refinery for the crude canola oil from the crushing plant.

That experience gave him the basis of design for the refinery, which allows him to recognize how to troubleshoot issues and identify opportunities to improve its performance.

Not everyone — including his own family — understands what he does in his job, so he explains by comparing the plant and refinery to a race car and his role and team to being part of a pit crew.

“I’m responsible for identifying and executing initiatives that help the race car go faster and be safer and more efficient,” he said.

As for the team, it includes production supervisors, process engineers, smart manufacturing team members, a plant superintendent and maintenance employees.

“We all leverage our different strengths and bring our different perspectives to table to tackle different issues on site,” said Bilkhu.

As for his input to the team, he clearly recognizes his niche and it continues to engage him as he has evolved over nearly 10 years later.

“In terms of process engineering, what I enjoy is identifying an opportunity — be it for efficiency or safety — and executing it,” said Bilkhu.

“Being able to solve chronic issues or capture value in ways we haven’t been able to do before is my passion.”

His work in site processing prepared him for the role that he holds today.
“Now in this smart manufacturing role, I can help to bridge the hands-on everyday plant experience with advanced analytics to merge the worlds together,” said Bilkhu.

Those analytics that he analyzes help inform how to optimize the facility.
“What we do is through monitoring and setting goals and monitoring deviations in KPI (key performance indicators), we are able to maintain a high standard of performance,” said Bilkhu.

“Our most important key performance indicators would revolve around how much seed we are getting through the facility and how much oil we are removing from that seed.”

When there is opportunity for improvement, Bilkhu’s experience helps him recognize what he can contribute to the solution and who he needs to consult for the team to fully understand how to proceed.

For example, “if throughput is not where we want it to be one week, that would trigger a deviation. We would do some cause analysis into why we were not able to achieve that week.

“Depending on exactly why we couldn’t meet it, we would pull in the appropriate specialties — operations, maintenance, materials technology leadership — to leverage their knowledge and expertise.”

As a process engineer, he needs to understand chemistry as well as physical principles, plus have some background in mechanics.

Engineering greater achievement

Bilkhu’s desire for more is being used to benefit the world. He finds alignment between his own personal values and his employers, which describes its purpose as existing “to nourish the world in a safe, responsible and sustainable way.”

The kid who grew up in the city today supports the efforts of those in rural Saskatchewan who feed the population at home and abroad. With his education and experience, he is seeking to maximize their ability to do that.

“We need to find a way to feed more people, extract more oil out of what we have today. It aligns with a base human need to produce more food for the world.”

Produced by Martin Charlton Communications for APEGS. Original story here.