Category: Case Study

Many manufacturers of abrasive materials fight a losing battle in their conveying systems. The root cause of constant pipeline problems along the entire manufacturing process is the abrasive material being conveyed, wearing through conventional sweep elbows at an alarming rate. Chromalloy’s Drilling Division was experiencing problems every 90 days. The companys Houston plant produces ground barite (barium sulfate), an abrasive compound used in commercial drilling operations. The high-density material was wearing through 4- and 5-inch …

Fiberglass is an especially abrasive material. RheTech Inc.’s long-sweep elbows were being worn away little by little until the inevitable happened — an expensive breech in the conveying system. The result was costly: product spillage, line shutdowns, and a substantial impact on productivity. Gary Wright, RheTech’s director of Plant Engineering, was convinced there was a more efficient and cost-effective way to keep the conveying systems operational.

Commercial breweries operate under some extremely tight quarters. Storage vessels for raw ingredients (especially malted barley), fermenters, bright tanks and chillers occupy large footprints on the production floor. Facilities managers are continually seeking out ways to increase production yields and efficiencies without losing square footage for the people operating and maintaining equipment. When the grain upload system at  Miller Brewing Co.’s Fort Worth, Texas plant needed a complete redesign and equipment upgrade, staff engineer Roy …

When wastewater treatment plants experience blowouts, cleanup is costly. Of course, there’s the cost of labor and materials, but there’s also potential fines as well as the obvious health risk and safety concerns. The Upper Occoquan Sewage Authority (UOSA) wastewater treatment plant in Centreville, VA, handles nearly 30 million gallons per day to provide potable water to more than 300,000 residents in northern Virginia. In order to raise the pH of the water to levels …

Regular readers of this blog know that in case after case, HammerTek’s Smart Elbow® deflection elbows have eliminated wear-related leaks in pneumatic, liquid, slurry and steam conveying lines across multiple industries. When manufacturers install Smart Elbow products to address line failures, they see benefits almost immediately – less line down time, drastically reduced maintenance and cleanup costs, and significantly increased productivity. By eliminating leaks of EPA-regulated materials common in many manufacturing processes, Smart Elbow deflection …

Silica aggregate, a key component in industrial flooring products produced by Stonhard Inc, at its Ft. Wayne, IN plant is an incredibly coarse and abrasive material — and the company was seeing first-hand how mercilessly it was wearing down components in its pneumatic conveying lines. According to Greg Sosenheimer, plant manager, 82,000 pounds of the material moves through the system each day, and the ceramic elbows Stonhard used to direct and funnel the flow of …

When you’re in the business of manufacturing and handling abrasive materials, downtime and expense caused by line plugging and rapidly wearing elbows are almost inevitable. That’s what Dave Goodwin, Plant Maintenance Superintendent for the Scarborough, Ontario plant of Fiberglas Canada, believed. Goodwin’s plant suffered through as many as 20 wear-related clogs per year — always occurring at the same two refractory elbows in the conveying system connecting the batch house and the furnace hall.

Western Paving Corporation makes asphalt for its own paving operations as well as supplying material on contract for other paving companies. The Denver, Colorado plant, a division of Western Mobil, produces no less than 29 different paving product mixes. A key component of these mixes is granite dust, collected from a rotary kiln and pneumatically conveyed to a point where it is mixed with oil and added back into the mix. This compound functions as …

ACRO Extrusion Corporation is a Wilmington-based company that produces vinyl window systems and extrusions. PVC resin is conveyed pneumatically from the plant’s outdoor silos to the mixing room at a rate of 34,000 pounds per day. The abrasive product was causing failures in the Delaware company’s sweep elbows at an alarming frequency — as often as every two to three weeks. Maintenance manager Al Husni knew he had to do something. Line failures were causing …

As the primary wastewater treatment facility for the city of Alexandria and Fairfax County, Va., the Alexandria Sanitation Authority’s sewage plant operates around the clock — with a daily volume that can exceed 80 million gallons. For pH control, the facility uses more than 500,000 pounds of pelletized lime each month, conveyed from trucks delivering the material to 70-foot silos via a pair of four-inch lines. A key component in the wastewater treatment process, pelletized …

For manufacturers of abrasive materials, repair and replacement of conveying system components is a nearly constant task. And an expensive one. Chromalloy is one such manufacturer. Its Drilling Division produces ground barite (barium sulfate) at a plant in Houston, Texas. This high-density and highly abrasive material was causing a host of problems in the conveying system. When the conventional long-sweep elbows weren’t plugging, they were prematurely wearing out.

PET poly pellets conveyed pneumatically from rail transport cars into holding silos — then again from storage silos into molding machines — were proving to be an expensive problem for Schmalbach-Lubeca’s Blythewood, S.C., plant. The company operates 24/7, manufacturing millions upon millions of plastic bottles each day for the beverage industry. Similar to many manufacturing and production facilities, the Blythewood plant used conventional long-sweep elbows as part of the conveying system. The design of a …

Even the most innocent looking material can wear down conventional long-radius sweep elbows when high volume meets high pressure. Bob DiCanio, engineering and maintenance manager at the Pet Foods Division of Quaker Oats (Rockbridge, Ill.), could practically set his watch to the timing of stainless steel elbow failures in his pneumatic conveying systems. Every three months, almost to the day.

Essroc Materials Inc. is a wet-process cement plant in Frederick, Md., producing nearly 400,000 tons of cement annually using two 400-foot rotary kilns. Dust produced during kilning of the cement must be removed from the exhaust gases — and Essroc’s kilns produced 120 tons of dust every 24 hours. While portion of this dust is sod for use in various industrial and agricultural applications, the majority must be moved pneumatically and recycled through the kilns …

Indiana’s Rensselaer Plastics Co. produces PVC pipe for commercial and residential plumbing with annual sales around $40 million. Resin and pellets are transferred via a pneumatic conveying system from storage hoppers to extruders. The problem? These same pellets and resins are abrasive, and the long-radius sweep elbows installed in the conveying system were continually being worn away by the material moving through. L.E. Koehler, assistant plant manager, was replacing worn-out elbows every two to four …

To meet EPA air pollution standards for sulfur dioxide emissions, Montgomery County’s North Incinerator plant injects finely powdered limestone into the three incinerator units housed at the facility. Long-radius stainless steel sweep elbows conveyed approximately 18,000 pounds of the material through the company’s dense phase pneumatic conveying system daily. The problem? Lime is incredibly abrasive and those elbows — critical components of the conveying system — were literally being worn away.

Four years. That’s how long it’s been since Tom Sorensen, maintenance manager at Carbo Ceramics’ Eufaula, Ala. facility, has had to replace even a single elbow in his pneumatic conveying lines since making the switch to the Smart Elbow® deflection elbow by Hammertek.

It turns out that even ordinary wood particles can become highly abrasive when moving at a high volume and pressure. At Northwood Pulp and Timber Ltd, in Prince George, British Columbia, wear-back sweep elbows were wearing out at an alarming rate (approximately every three months), thanks in part to the “hog fuel” mixture of bark and sawdust pneumatically conveyed through the plant’s system.

A maker of oat cereal and oat flour, National Oats (a subsidiary of Curtice Burns, Inc.) uses a pneumatic conveyance system to move raw oats from their outdoor storage tanks to blending vessels housed inside the plant at a rate of 90,000 lbs/hour through an 8” pipeline. The volume of material moving through the system was taking its toll on the wear-back ceramic sweep elbows. These sweep elbows required periodic repair and replacement — which …