Case Studies
Ohio Plastics Recycling Company
Jun. 04, 2019
Problem
A northeast Ohio Plastics recycling facility has been in a growth mode for several years and with the growth came more issue with the maintenance on their material handling system components. Their production increased 3 fold and what they were experiencing was their material handling fans and cyclone separators were wearing out and failing in some cases less than 30 days. With our understanding & knowledge of pneumatic material handling systems & how to apply them in applications that lend themselfs to highly abrasive applications we offered them a design that resulted in significant service life increase and less maintenance cost.
Solution/Recommendations:
Compass Systems analyzed the application, ran some tests on the abrasive nature of the product and then offered the following solutions: 1st. To address the abrasive nature of the product we fabricated a couple of standard components of several different types of abrasive resistant materials like AR Steel 225, 350, & 500, AR Steel with a Tungensten Carbide Impregnated Coating, and Carbon Steel with a Flame Spray Coating. With each of these we obtained an increase in service life but not to the extent we had hoped for or expected. We then fabricated a new impeller design that included the use of the AR 500 Steel that showed the best results against abrasion, but also allowed us to spread the material out across the blades, reducing the wear at the same location by 60%.
Outcome:
This project lasted more than 9 months with all of the testing. However, the end result of this we more then tripled the service life of the equipment, while at the same time allowing them to further increase their production rates and to reduce their maintenance & downtime cost significantly. We applied the same ideas to the cyclone separators and obtained similar results. Today this facility utilizes more than a dozen of our custom material handling fans, cyclones, and system.