Dear Sirs,

I am looking for help! I wish to convey approximately 15 tons of material per 24 hour day. I guess the system should be capable of conveying about 3 tons per hour for short periods at a time.

Various different additives need to be conveyed through the system, but only one additive at a time. All of the additives are very friable pellets, cylindrical in shape about 5mm long, and 3mm diameter, bulk density of between 480 & 600 kg/m^3. Some additives will arrive in 500kg bags and others in 25kg bags.

Currently we simply employ a 600 kg hoist, & all additives arrive in 25kg bags, but we wish to move some of this to 500kg FIBC's.

The idea is that these then have to be debagged into a hopper, conveyed horizontally (East) 10 meters, elevated 30 meters, then conveyed 10 meters horizontally (North), and discharged into a 500kg receiving hopper.

I have considered vacuum conveying, but this damages the product. Simply installing an elevator or larger hoist is too time consuming for the operator, and is too labour intensive.

I would like to automate as far as possible, and suggest that a "tube-chain" conveyer may do the job. The additive could be debagged or flood fed into a feed hopper, and conveyed to the 500 kg receiving hopper through a control system off level switches.

Any thoughts??

Regards,

Dave. ■