Dear Amrit,

Thank you.

My Tipfill was conceived as a probable solution to a post on this forum which particularly mentioned problems with transporting fly ash across Continental India.

One respondent from near Luknow mentioned that he was having great difficulty in sourcing pressurised tankers. In my earlier days I was involved in designing such vehicles and more recently I have engineered high performance refinery reactor vessels. Both types rightly demand compliance with safety codes and there can be no deviation despite them being poles apart. Powder tankers are necessarily large volume and often have to accommodate aeration which is introduced at the filling stage. Payload is a governing factor and allowable tank pressure is dramatically limited by the influence of increasing shell thickness. Providing containment throughout discharge pressures below 2bar is just accepted because of manufacturing expediency. Powder tanker (tub) suppliers dare not increase pressure and expect to stay in business. My starting question was "Should you need to build a large fleet of very expensive tankers to carry large volumes of relatively worthless products if there was an alternative?". In the cases of fly ash, cement and grain, tipper trucks work beautifully throughout the world. There is also a photo on another thread which shows a freight container tipping cargo into a pneumatic conveying line without any problems. I have done that job as a driver on a regular basis and never had to wait for any hanging up PVC pellets to be removed.

I recognise that there might be some reluctance for some powders to admit into a pneumatic conveying line and in such cases the blow down valve voids could, perhaps, be vented into any local hang ups. It depends on the tipper coverage and the operator observance. If there is a good cover aeration/fluidising can be controlled by watching the disturbances of the tarpaulin. There is no question that the tipper truck cannot feed the tailgate nozzles and there is absolutely no question that that the TipFill can, or should, ever be considered for hazardous materials. It probably costs very little to incorporate aeration technology and I would welcome the option if necessary. I appreciate that a wet climate might influence the transit behaviour of a powder and would demand excellent covering and tight sealing thereof.

Until your concise comments I was just considering pneumatic conveying delivering at higher pressure up to a silo. Tipper trucks are victims of their own success because they are ideally suited to clumsy dumping at great speed through an unrestricted tailgate. TipFill is not restricted to pneumatic conveying and can control delivery towards screw and belt conveyors also.

Cheers. ■

Any powder which can be discharged from a tanker can be discharged from a tipper. It is only necessary to control the tipper discharge to match the final pneumatic conveying rate to a silo.

A Tip-Spill-Skid comfortably regulates the pneumatic conveying rate. The skid is manoeuvred behind the tipper with a forklift and the drive air feed and conveying lines are connected to blowdown airlocks. Slip-on extensions are connected to the rectangular nozzles, integral to the tailgate, before the closure panels are removed. Bellows can be slipped over the extensions if the dust situation merits. Next the closure panels are removed and the air inlet is opened and the airlock valve started. There are 2 conveying lines so the conveying rate is as high as the airflow will supply and the valve leakage will allow.

The system is also, more easily, applicable to container deliveries with a bulkhead insert fitted over the open doorway. The Tip-Spill-Skid is designed to minimise tailgate modification work and also reduce the connecting time. When the system is used with containers the Temporary Dunnage attachment has access chambers to allow opening of any liner.

There is now a bulk handling system available for tipper truck and container operators alike at very reasonable cost to interested parties. Tipping frames, tipping skeletal trailers and reach trucks are things of the past and the scope of powder tankers is agreeably reduced.

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