Mechanical Technology September 2015

⎪ On the cover ⎪

Following the successful delivery of a tandem rotary wagon tippler to the port of Nacala in Mozambique, sales manager, Matthias Göing and sales engineer, Luc Tellier of ThyssenKrupp Industrial Solutions South Africa, Resource Technologies, talk about the advantages of their technology for the sustainability of mining, exports and power stations. Wagon tipplers for more efficient unloading of bulk materials

iron ore from Sishen. “We supplied some side wagon tipplers to Saldanha Steel in

the early 90s and to the cement plants, but that was some time ago. Our most current success was the installation of a state-of-the-art ThyssenKrupp tandem rotary tippler at the Port of Nacala for Vale in Mozambique,” continues Göing. This system unloads trains bringing coal to the deep-water port from the Moatise Basin in the Tete Province of Mozambique, estimated to contain 2.4-billion tons of coal. “We have in‑ stalled and commissioned a tandem O-type wagon tippler in Nacala with a throughput capacity of 6 500 t/h,” he tells MechTech Random and side tipplers Tellier describes the different types of wagon tipplers available from Thyssen‑ Krupp. “Most commonly used in South Africa are random tipplers, which require that the train is broken up into smaller sections, called rakes, before being un‑ loaded. Typically, a large random tippler would be able to discharge a 10-wagon rake, but they are most commonly used to discharge one or two decoupled wagons at a time,” he explains. “These are ideal for smaller plants and power stations,” he says, adding “the key ad‑ vantage of random tippling is that any type of wagon can be accommodated, depending on the ore being transported.” Side tipplers are the simplest random option and are generally used to tip a single uncoupled wagon. “The turning point of a side tippler is off centre and side tippling involves lifting the wagon around in an arc, unloading the mate‑ rial along the side of the track into a bin at ground level.” These systems have

large counter‑ weights to shift the centre of gravity to the

offset turning point. This means that wagons have to be decoupled due to the lateral movement. The key advantage is that less underground civil work is required, since the ore can be offloaded at ground level. Another solution, currently being used due to the shortage of bulk ore wagons, is the container tippler. “Operators are looking to use strengthened 20-ft con‑ tainers instead of dedicated bulk wagons to transport ore. Two containers are then transported on each flat bed wagon in a train. “At its destination, the container filled with commodities is then lifted off the train using a container tippler hanging off a crane. The tippler allows the container to be rotated underneath the crane hook to discharge the material onto a stockpile. “This is an interim solu‑ tion though, which while flexible, cannot substitute for a dedicated wagon tippler solution,” Göing argues. Rotary tipplers and unit trains Bigger bulk operations, such as Nacala, Richards Bay and Saldanha Bay, oper‑ ate unit trains, which are purpose-built trains designed with rotary wagon tip‑ pling in mind. Unit trains incorporate rotary couplings so that the wagons do not need to be decoupled from the loco or the other wagons before tipping the materials. “And for higher throughput, unit trains can also be coupled in pairs

Luc Tellier and Matthias Göing.

“ G lobally, wagon tipplers are one of our flagship prod‑ ucts, but ThyssenKrupp is not as well recognised for this equipment in sub-Saharan Africa as we are in the rest of the world,” begins Göing. “There are only two premium OEMs of wagon tipplers in the world and we share the global market rela‑ tively evenly. But here, due to historical reasons, we are not nearly as well-known as we should be,” he adds. To transport bulk materials over long distances in large volumes, typically mil‑ lions of tons per year: “operators need to load at the mines and transport the material efficiently, economically and in an ecologically friendly way to its destina‑ tion, be that a power station or an export terminal”. “For distances of up to 50 km, over‑ land conveyors are arguably the better option, but for the overland transfer of bulk materials over greater distance, only trains make sense. And for unloading material from railway wagons at a des‑ tination, wagon tipplers are, by far, the most productive and efficient solution,” explains Göing. Wagon tipplers are used in South Africa, in Richards Bay at the end of the coal line and in Saldanha to unload

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Mechanical Technology — September 2015