The Spillage Problem
Dear Mr Shah,
Many years ago we came across the same problem.
We solved the problem by putting flat rubber belting (20 mm thick)
as cover on the lower horizontal section, between two discs of
the lower bend pulley and up to the top horizontal section.
Flat idlers were installed to force the flat belting to be close to the vertical section
of the pocket conveyor (h=25.5 m) and prevent the spillage.
The arrangement has been operating since 1986.
Regards,
Dr M.Rivkin ■
Re: Spillage Problem In Vertical Pocket Conveyor
Dear Mr. Shah:
As Dr. Rivkin has suggested, this is a problem with corrugated sidewall vertical conveyor belts. Both the method he suggested and the one that you have already tried should suffice to control spillage from trapped pellets in the corrugations. One modification to the method you tried is to bolt the sponge rubber pieces to the trailing side wall section of the corrugation (this allows the corrugation to open as it goes around the drive, tail, and lower bend pulleys and compress as it goes around the lower deflection wheels).
If the only concern is the protection of personnel from flying pellets, you could install a fabric curtain around the system to contain the pellets and channel them back to the conveyor.
As always, what solutions do the system designer and belt manufacturer offer?
Regards, ■
Leaking Flexowell Conveyor
Flexowell have a solution for your problem, which should have been incorporated in the original belt configuration design.
(1) Who manufactured the belt, or where was it manufactured?
(2) How high is the Flexowell edge?
(3) Describe the cleat shape, its height, its turn-up lip.
(3) Is the body of each cleat aligned with the adjoining inside
wave of the edge?
(4) Is the Flxowell edge fastened to the cleat mechanically?
Flexowell should be able to furnish the fasteners and re-inforcing mouldings to do this, if not already incorporated in your belt.
Good Luck!
Werner Plaut
Product Manager
EleVeyor Mfg. Div. ■
Re: Spillage Problem In Vertical Pocket Conveyor
Dear Mr. Shah,
I was interested to hear of this problem that you have and in our experience this is one that is easily solved. We have been involved in the specifying and manufacture of sidewall belts for many years, and you can contact us so that we can discuss this problem by e-mailing us at peter.lord@sbsbelting.com ■
Re: Spillage Problem In Vertical Pocket Conveyor
Dear Mr. Shah
We´ve faced the same problem involving pellets and Flexowell lifters, at a Niobium pelletizing plant here in Brazil, and I know you are dealing with a hard-to-solve problem.
In our case we totally enclosed the lower part of the conveyor, and at the bottom, under the conveyor, we installed a pull device with cross bars, pulled by side chains wich extract the pellets from this place and put it in a box, regaining the material to the process.
This device works few minutes per day, just for the cleaning of this area.
You should create this device according your local limitations for placing it.
Be sure your conveyor is really enclosed.
But, at the end, we can not stop the reason of the problem, this material leakage from this type of conveyor, at least for pellets, and manytimes we found pieces of pellet at places that no one could believe it could be found.
Regards
Alexandre Calijorne
Caltra Projetos & Consultoria
email caltrapc@yahoo.com.br ■
Spillage Problem in Vertical Pocket conveyor
We have installed vertical pocket conveyor with side cleats[wall] supplied by Flexowell for handling of Iron pellets in our steel plant having speed of 1.25 m/s and capacity of 500 TPH.
We are facing problem of spillage once the belt becomes vertical. We have observed that the pellets gets entangled in the cleats of sidewall during loading and slips off when belt becomes vertical after passing over the bend pulley. The spilled material falls with gravity within a vertical height range of 70 mtr.
We have tried to arrest the spilled material by fixing pieces of flat belt at the edge of casing of vertical conveyor. But still the falling material with high velocity is dangerous for operation personnel in vicinity of belt area.
We also tried with glueing Foam pieces inside the cleats so that there is no room for pellets to get entangled. But over a period of time, [say 20 days], foam pieces are coming out.
Can somebody suggest some solution for this.
Rgds,
Jigishu Shah ■