Application Notes & Case Studies

Bulk Bag Discharger and Flexible Screw Conveyor for Table Salt

Application Notes & Case Studies /

This customer had existing equipment to deliver salt into their auger filler. The salt comes in bulk bags as a solidified block and is conditioned offline in a warehouse using a hydraulic bag conditioner. The primary issue for this application was to maintain a consistent, uniform material supply into the auger filler for it to operate properly. The customers’ existing discharge station features a small agitator that would break up material into irregular sized chunks that would not provide a uniform material supply into the auger filler. This results in off-spec filled packages that would need to be reprocessed.
Understanding the application requirements, NBE conducted a test with the customer at our Innovation Center and Application Workshop. We used a bulk bag discharger with integral lump breaker (with screen), along with a screw conveyor, to unload the bag and process it into a consistent supply of material. The salt was broken down back to nearly original particle size. The customer was thrilled with the outcome.

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Liquid Slurry System for Water and Sodium Chloride

Application Notes & Case Studies /

The customer needed a replacement system to combine and dissolve sodium chloride with water into a brine to feed their downstream process. Their existing system was labor intensive, unreliable, and hard to keep clean. Looking to make enhancements in those areas, along with improved safety and accuracy, NBE provided a bulk bag unloader equipped with E2, dust collection, crumbler, flexible screw conveyor, and safety caging. The sodium chloride is fed into a fiberglass reinforced plastic (FRP) tank to be combined with water, utilizing a Brawn mixer to agitate the contents along with a high-shear inline mixer to shear the sodium chloride particles and quickly dissolve them. High accuracy of additions is achieved with load cells on the dry addition and a magnetic flowmeter on the water side. Conductivity instrumentation is installed in the mixing tank to verify correct solution concentrations. Sodium chloride solutions are very corrosive, so special materials such as Hastelloy, AL6XN, FRP, and CPVC were chosen for various components. NBE provided a full control package including PLC and HMI set up for automatic operation.

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Semi-Automatic Drum Filling System for Resins and Hardeners

Application Notes & Case Studies /

This packaging system is designed to fill lined 55-gallon open-head steel drums with viscous resins and hardeners in a continuous fashion semi-automatically. Two systems were supplied to optimize through put and isolate product mixes. The equipment features a removable supply manifold utilized to transfer product to the filling zone. Two profile cut valves with infinite positioners control the flow of product to the direct fill nozzles based on feedback from the net weight scales. The F-Style design includes two infeed conveyors, two net weight filling stations, two turntables, and a common accumulation conveyor. The accumulation conveyor includes a continuous inkjet printer for applying date, lot, and weight information, a heated vacuum sealer, and a manual lidding station. With a roller height of just 6.5” the low-profile conveyors were designed with ergonomics in mind. The polycarbonate enclosure serves to improve operator safety while also maintaining a low moisture environment within the filling zone through utilization of dry air nozzles throughout.

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Aggregate Diverter Handling Corn Grits

Application Notes & Case Studies /

These Vortex Aggregate Diverters are used to handle the discharged material from a bucket elevator to the different storage silos below.

For this application, electric actuators were chosen due to the lack of availability of air available where the valves are located within the plant.

Special modifications were made for additional resistance to abrasion. These included the implementation of a special service inlet with built in dead pocket/rock box and a nest coating in the diverter cube/rock box.

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Delumping and Dispersing Battery Powders

Application Notes & Case Studies /

A large, international manufacturer of dry cell batteries approached Quadro to help them with the manufacture of their battery products. The battery employed several powder mixtures of Teflon, Carbon Black powder and 1/8″ pieces of Graphite. The customer was getting 30% – 40% of the product below 60 mesh USS, by running a single-pass through a Hammermill and two passes through the Comil®. Heat generation in the Hammermill caused blinding of the screen which slowed down production of the batteries. The customer wanted to eliminate the Hammermill stage. The required capacity rate was 13 lbs/hr.

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Vortex Gravity Vee Diverting Grains Used In Rice Crisp and Rice Cake Production

Application Notes & Case Studies /

The equipment pictured below is the Vortex Gravity Vee Diverter. Its distinctive “dual gate” design, equipped with independent controls, enables a versatile material flow. This innovation allows for the simultaneous diversion of material through both outlet chutes, individual chute control, or even a complete shut-off when necessary. The diverter’s mechanically actuated sliding blades promise uncompromising positive material shut-off and prevent seal packing, ensuring operational longevity. Its hard polymer bonnet seals and side seals outperform alternative sealing materials, providing superior wear resistance and an extended service life. For precision and repeatability in batchweights during the manufacturing process, the Gravity Vee Diverter can be outfitted with Vortex material flow control assemblies. This model includes an Adjustable Variable Postion (AVP) air control setup which allows for 2 or more positions that are controlled via the magnetic reed switch feedback. In this case the Gravity Vee is setup for 3 positions. The Gravity Vee also includes a manual Cylinder Variable Position Open (CVPO) modification to each of the cylinders. Each threaded rod sticking out of the cylinder can be adjusted to create a manual preferred stop point to limit the amount the blade is able to open.

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Feeding and Conveying in the Production of Battery Masses

Application Notes & Case Studies /

Whether feeding continuously or via batch the accuracy of addition is critical to the end quality and desired functionality of battery masses. While this is greatly impacted by the bulk materials themselves and the conditions, using the right tools to identify the best equipment will lead to the best possible system design. For handling of difficult materials, material tests are essential for determining optimal equipment configurations for both feeders and pneumatic conveying. With Coperion K-Tron’s wealth of experience, lab data, and technical expertise we can test and design systems for the most challenging of materials in any application, especially those for the battery industry.

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Moving Cement Powder In Concrete Batch Plants

Application Notes & Case Studies /

Bin vibrators were considered but the fugitive vibration caused damage to peripheral equipment such as piping joints and process instrumentation. The installation of the Evasser from Monitor Technologies LLC proved to be the solution.
Clever placement of several Evasser aeration devices, recommended by Monitor Technologies application specialist and technical support personnel, kept the cement powder fluidized and flowing when required. This prevented the cement from packing, eliminating the root cause of the problem. The Evasser bin aerator operates silently from air supplied by the process plant air source so wear on the structure was not a factor

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