Category: Case Study

In order to meet federal sulfur dioxide emissions standards, PECO Energy Company’s Eddystone plant employs a scrubbing process using magnesium oxide (MgO) pneumatically conveyed from storage silos to a mixer before being sprayed into the plant’s exhaust stacks. The MgO must be fully operational whenever the coal-fired plant is generating electricity to keep sulfur dioxide emissions below mandated levels. Elbow failure is not an option.

Worn-out elbows — and the problems associated with them — are a fact of life in industrial environments. Most elbows wear out and have to be repaired and replaced frequently (sometimes as often as every 90 days in high-wear applications conveying abrasive material), costing production lines a heavy price in time, equipment and materials. That’s what Gary Wright, Director of Plant Engineering at RheTech, always assumed to be true. Until he discovered the Smart Elbow …

Blowouts aren’t just costly due to lost productivity and extensive cleanup; they often carry substantial health risks and safety concerns from spilled material and environmental conditions. This was certainly the case with the Upper Occoquan Sewage Authority (UOSA). The wastewater treatment plant handles upwards of 30 million gallons per day and provides potable water to more than 300,000 people in portions of Fairfax and Prince William counties in northern Virginia. Its chemical treatment system relies …

Space is often at a premium in commercial breweries. Raw ingredients, fermentation vessels, and other brewery equipment have large footprints. Engineers and plant managers are always looking at ways to maximize efficiencies without crowding out existing equipment and personnel. Roy Marin, staff engineer at the Miller Brewing Co. plant in Fort Worth, Texas, found himself in just such a situation.

When materials clog in pneumatic conveyor systems, manufacturers feel the pinch. Line shutdowns are costly and result in lost productivity and missed production schedules. They’re a headache too many manufacturers assumed were unavoidable. The best a manufacturer of loose, abrasive material could hope for infrequent clogs which could be cleared quickly without significantly impacting productivity. Fiberglas Canada used to think this way, until they installed Hammertek’s Smart Elbow deflection elbow on their pneumatic conveyor system.

A key ingredient in industrial and commercial flooring products, silica aggregate is incredibly abrasive. Manufacturers like Stonhard are fighting a losing battle in their pneumatic systems, replacing costly ceramic pipe elbows far too often. Their ceramic elbows, vital for moving the aggregate through the pneumatic lines, were literally being worn away by the fast moving material. According to Greg Sosenheimer, plant manager at Stonhard’s Fort Wayne, IN, plant, 82,000 pounds of the coarse and abrasive …

One of the things we’ve always tried to demonstrate on this blog is how the Smart Elbow deflection elbow saves space, time and money. We’ve highlighted companies dealing with plastics, abrasives, grain, wood pulp, power and wastewater through a series of case studies addressing maintenance issues, operational inefficiencies, mitigation of material costs, and flow control, to name just a few. They all had one thing in common: their conveyor systems were all improved significantly through …

In case after case, we have shown that replacing worn sweep elbows in pneumatic, liquid, slurry and steam conveying lines with HammerTek’s revolutionary Smart Elbow® deflection elbows eliminated frequent leaks and their costs in product loss, repair and replacement, production line downtime and product and facility contamination. In case after case, HammerTek Smart Elbow units have prevented exposure to OSHA and EPA compliance risk.

Engineers at Alexandria Sanitation Authority’s municipal wastewater treatment facility, a sprawling plant that treats more than 80 million gallons of wastewater a day from the Virginia suburbs of Washington, D.C., had had enough troubles with lime spills. It was the mid-1990s and the plant was new and state-of-the-art, but the lime — which is carried in pelletized form through two four-inch pneumatic lines from truck to silo and used for pH control — kept wearing …

Abrasive materials are, well, abrasive — whether they’re being used in their intended manner or passing through pipelines in the plant where they’re produced. So what do you do when these materials are causing constant pipeline problems in the manufacturing process? You can’t stop the abrasive from being abrasive, so you have to look elsewhere — and that’s exactly what engineers at Chromalloy’s Drilling Division had to do.

As faithfully as an old hound, pneumatic pipe elbows were wearing out at the Pet Foods Division of Quaker Oats in Rockford, Illinois. Time after time — every three months, on average — the stainless steel elbows in the lines carrying grain from the plant’s storage areas to receiving tanks were wearing out. Quaker had been using conventional, long-radius sweep elbows in these lines. But the constant ruptures, resulting in clouds of grain dust, line …

Rennselaer Plastics Co. has learned the easy way that sometimes it’s good to go by your elbow when you need a new rule of thumb. The Rennselaer, Indiana company, which produces PVC piping products for the plumbing trade, utilizes a pneumatic conveying system to transfer plastic resin beads and pellets from outdoor storage hoppers to its pipe extruders. While the company had the whole process state-of-the-art and finely tuned, there was one area that left …

If you’ve read other posts in this blog, you’ve undoubtedly picked up on the fact that HammerTek’s Smart Elbow deflection elbow is the answer for industrial applications requiring the movement of abrasive product pneumatically from one place to another. Just in case you haven’t, or you need one more reason before picking up that phone, this case study is for you. Essroc Materials Inc. had the whole cement manufacturing process set in stone save one …

As time goes by, HammerTek’s patented Smart Elbow deflection elbow is proving that it can move your product through bends in pneumatic conveying lines — no matter the product. In Prince George, British Columbia, Northwood Pulp and Timber Ltd. has applied the Smart Elbow deflection elbow to successfully remedy a problem common to the pulp and paper industry: moving wood chips, bark and sawdust — known in the industry as hog fuel — while eliminating …

Smart Elbow deflection elbows may be known for their ability to handle changes in pipeline direction with much less wear, tear and maintenance than traditional sweep elbows, but many of our customers are reporting additional benefits. Take, for example, National Oats. The Cedar Rapids, IA, plant has been processing oat cereal and flour for decades. Prior to 1985, conveyance of these materials from outdoor storage tanks to indoor blending vessels was handled the traditional way, …

There’s something odd about an industry that’s designed to be good for the environment having environmental concerns of its own. Yet that’s just what was happening at Montgomery County’s North Incinerator plant, which converts household waste to energy in the Dayton, Ohio, area. Try as they did, engineers could not find a way to convey powdered lime — part of the plant’s phase pneumatic conveying system — for any great length of time before a …

A customer of ours — a PVC pipe producer with $40 million in annual sales — uses a pneumatic conveying system to transfer resin and pellets from storage to the pipe extruders. The abrasive nature of their product was causing elbow wear — and serious down time — every couple of months. Another customer producing vinyl windows and extrusions experienced elbow failure &mash; along with expensive down time and EPA fines — every couple of …

When Miller Brewing Company’s Fort Worth, TX facility needed to make a change in its conveying system, HammerTek and its patented Smart Elbow® deflection elbow proved the right recipe for the job. Roy Marin, staff engineer at the facility, needed to replace a worn-out automatic diverter that switched its rail car unload line from one storage silo to another. This diverter had been a source of maintenance and housekeeping problems, and Marin wanted to replace …

The Engineers at PECO Energy Company’s Eddystone Generating Plant near Philadelphia had a problem on their hands: The scrubbing process line responsible for meeting Federal emissions standards was failing on a regular basis, causing costly cleanup, environmental and regulatory concerns. The plant utilizes a magnesium oxide-based scrubbing process to remove sulfur dioxide — a component in acid rain — from the coal-fired plant’s exhaust. Magnesium oxide powder is conveyed pneumatically from storage silos to a …

Robert Forgione was tired of slipping and sliding his way through another pile of dry pebble line and dust, half-blinded by the cloud it had created as it spewed from a failed conveying line elbow at the Upper Occoquan Water Reclamation Plant in Centreville, Virginia. The half-inch hole created by the mere passage of lime powder through a bend in a line, called a sweep elbow in the industry, had blown the fine powder all …