Mechanical Technology August 2016

Mechanical Technology — August 2016

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Materials handling and minerals processing

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Above:

Weba Chute Systems are custom-engineered to meet the

specific criteria of each transfer point, and factors such as belt

speed, belt width, material size, shape and throughput are taken into

account.

Right:

Weba Chute Systems at the Isdemir Steel Plant in

Turkey replace the conventional flopper door arrangement in the bifur-

cated chutes with a custom-engineered articulating trolley section.

cant reduction in degradation with the

sinter breakage rate dropping to 12.4%.

This translates in to a 50% improvement.

The noise levels recorded with the

previous chutes was 95 dB, and this had

a detrimental effect on plant maintenance

as the permitted exposure time for per-

sonnel at this extremely high noise level

is between 30 minutes to an hour. This

made equipment inspections difficult and

thorough evaluation almost impossible.

Operating with the Weba Chute

Systems in the plant has seen the noise

level decrease by more than 10 dB to

83 dB, which allows a period of eight

hours at this level of exposure.

“The intellectual property of our engi-

neers remains the crux of our innovative

custom-engineered solutions, however

we do believe in complementing our

practical knowledge with discrete ele-

ment modelling (DEM) simulation as a

verification tool,” Nienaber says.

“Our primary objective remains engi-

neering a tailor-made best practice chute

solution for each and every customer,” he

concludes.