HammerTek Elbow Room
SMART ELBOW® Deflection Elbow for Pneumatic Conveying Systemsress site
Gary Wright may have discovered something that works better than duct tape. Wright is director of plant engineering at RheTech Inc. of Whitmore Lake, Michigan, an industry that designs, manufactures and produces propriety thermoplastic polyolefin alloys and compounds that are sold to the transportation and consumer durable goods markets. In 1998, RheTech opened a new plant in Fowlerville, Michigan.
Tom Sorensen had a real dilemma on his hands. And it was on his hands because it wouldn’t stay in his plant’s conveying lines where it belonged. His problem: When your plant manufactures highly abrasive ceramic beads that are used as proppants in oil and gas exploration and drilling, how do you keep those beads from doing their destructive work inside your conveying lines? Carbo Ceramics’ Eufaula, Ala. facility manufactures calcined kaolin ceramic beads that …
In an environment where product mixture is critical and rapidly failing sweep elbows were causing expensive downtime and EPA fines, Al Husni had to do something. Husni is maintenance manager at ACRO Extrusion Corporation, a Wilmington, DE plant that produces vinyl window systems and extrusions. PVC resin runs from ACRO’s outdoor silos to the plant’s mixing room at a rate of as much as 34,000 pounds per day, and the abrasive product was causing the …
Frequent shutdowns weren’t the only inconvenience caused by failing sweep elbows at Montgomery County’s North Incinerator plant. They also created a cleanup nightmare every time the finely powdered limestone they were conveying exploded into the air like so much talcum powder. The plant, which serves the Dayton area, also faced hefty downtime expenses if it stayed shut down too long, Plant Manager Dave Martin said. Powdered limestone must be injected into the plant’s three incinerators …
HammerTek’s Smart Elbow deflection elbow handles a hopeless situation like just another day on the job. Chromalloy’s Drilling Division produces ground barite (barium sulfate) at a plant in Houston, Texas. Barite is an abrasive material that was causing premature wear and plugging problems with the conventional elbows being used to transport it pneumatically from the plant’s grinding mills to its storage tanks.
HammerTek’s Smart Elbow® deflection elbows work so well because they don’t allow product to impact and erode their walls. No matter the product — from highly abrasive crushed granite to seemingly harmless sawdust — all have the ability, under high speed and pressure, to erode sweep elbows. Time and again, the stainless steel elbows in the pneumatic conveying systems at the Pet Foods Division of Quaker Oats in Rockbridge, Ill., were wearing out prematurely — …
A company that produces pipe was having some troubles of its own before HammerTek’s Smart Elbow® deflection elbow solved their problem. Rensselaer Plastics Co. of Rensselaer, Ind., produces PVC piping products for the plumbing trade, with annual sales in the $40 million range. One process at the plant uses a pneumatic conveying system to transfer resin and pellets from storage hoppers to pipe extruders, and therein lay the plant’s Achilles Heel.
Like many other industries that need to move abrasive product through pneumatic lines, Essroc Materials Inc. has solved a lot of its plugging and wear headaches with HammerTek’s Smart Elbow deflection elbow technology. Essroc, formerly Coplay Cement, is a wet-process cement plant in Frederick, Md., that produces 350,000 to 400,000 tons of cement annually using two 400-foot rotary cement kilns.
Mario Rezendes had a problem — until he discovered HammerTek’s Smart Elbow deflection elbow. Rezendes, maintenance supervisor at Northwood Pulp and Timber Ltd. in Prince George, British Columbia, was facing a problem common in the pulp and paper industry: Moving product through bends in pneumatic lines where friction causes failure, leaks and downtime.
HammerTek’s patented Smart Elbow deflection elbow has proven itself as the smart solution for abrasive issues in pneumatic lines conveying products like oats, lime and wood particulates. But what about an intensely abrasive product like granite dust? Western Paving Corp., a division of Western Mobil, has to move granite dust from one area to another in its manufacturing process. Granite dust from the kiln is collected and pneumatically conveyed to a point where it is …
The ability of HammerTek’s patented Smart Elbow deflection elbows to eliminate elbow wear due to abrasive impact and friction has made a major impact on downtime at a high-volume municipal wastewater treatment facility serving the suburbs of Washington, D.C. As the primary wastewater treatment facility for the city of Alexandria and Fairfax County, Va., the Alexandria Sanitation Authority’s sewage plant operates 24 hours a day with a volume that can exceed 80 million gallons per …
One of the benefits of HammerTek’s patented Smart Elbow deflection elbow design is the reduction in friction and heat that results from keeping material from contacting the walls of its pipe elbows. Getting rid of that friction has done nothing but good for Schmalbach-Lubeca’sBlythewood,South Carolinalocation. One of the company’s 63 plants worldwide producing millions of plastic beverage bottles daily, the Blythewood plant was using long-radius elbows to convey PET Poly Pellets from rail car to …
If an elephant truly can be eaten “one bite at a time,” then it stands to reason that something as light and fluffy as a dried oat can — eventually — blast a hole through a cast-iron pipe elbow. As long as that elbow isn’t a HammerTek Smart Elbow deflection elbow. Prior to 1985, National Oats of Cedar Rapids, IA, had been conveying oats for its oat cereal and oat flour from its outdoor storage …
Frequent shutdowns weren’t the only inconvenience caused by failing sweep elbows at Montgomery County’s North Incinerator plant. They also created a cleanup nightmare every time the finely powdered limestone they were conveying exploded into the air like so much talcum powder. To read the full Case Study click here.
Greg Sosenheimer’s maintenance problems were starting to grate on his nerves almost as much as his product was wearing down the pipe elbows in use at his Ft. Wayne, IN plant. You can read the full case study here.
Close to five years after HammerTek did a case study on the 120 Smart Elbow deflection elbows installed at RheTech, Inc., we checked in with them to find out how the 120 elbows were holding up. RheTech is a designer, manufacturer and marketer of proprietary thermoplastic polyolefin alloys and compounds which are sold to the transportation and consumer durable goods markets. RheTech uses additives such as minerals and fiber reinforcements in their products, which are …
At PECO Energy Company’s Eddystone facility, standard type 316L stainless pipe elbows frequently wore out, creating a wide range of costly problems. The Philadelphia-area power plant was experiencing magnesium oxide leaks from the bottom and top of their stainless-steel elbows in the line that releases pressure from the system. A hole would appear every four to six months due to wear in the elbow, releasing a mass of MgO dust throughout the plant. While an …
The pulp and paper industry is no stranger to the problems that result from the demands that wood chips and dust put on conveying systems. That’s why when a engineers at a British Columbian sawmill designed their new pneumatic conveying system, they were sure to specify a manufacturing elbow that could withstand the abrasive nature of cedar by-products without plugging. For the full case study, click here.
Smart Elbow deflection elbows can offer benefits beyond solving manufacturing problems. When Miller Brewing Company needed a space-saving design solution, they found the elbows solved their predicament and saved them money in the process.
When the Upper Occoquan Sewage Authority (UOSA) experienced a blowout, it caused not only costly and time-consuming downtime and cleanup, but also health risks and safety concerns. Thanks to the Smart Elbow deflection elbow from HammerTek Corp., the wastewater treatment plant hasn’t had an elbow failure again since installation. Click here to read the full case study.