Compressed Air Best Practices - February 2008 - (Page 25)

Focus Industry BULK HANDLING KH | 02/08 | in Portland Cement Manufacturing Processes Industrial vacuum cleaners that would make Tim “The Tool Man” Taylor green with envy are more sophisticated than their cousin, the shoptype vac that has been labeled “asthmatic” when up against the savage conditions in the cement industry. “We tried shop vacuums, but they just wouldn’t last,” says Andy Rodgers, Terminal Manager at Buzzi Unicem USA’s Pensacola, FL terminal. “The dust just eats everything up and the motors don’t last.” company from earlier in his career and said, “the company said that you could pick up a bowling ball with it and we actually tried it once and it really worked!” What impressed Rodgers most about the industrial vacuum was that it is powered by air and not electricity. “All these terminals have air compressors,” he said. “Air operates our valves; it operates our boot connectors, that is how we move the material — by air.” The air-powered vacs operate on the Venturi principle and by design create their own vacuum without motors or moving parts parts, making them intrinsically safe and ideal for use with abrasive cement particles that can damage electrical equipment over time. “It works perfect for these big terminals.” Rodgers is only one of 31 Buzzi Unicem USA terminal managers who have a competitive tradition of tracking who has the cleanest terminal. After presenting his solution at last year’s annual meeting, the competition escalated. “That next week, I had 30 emails asking me where I got this thing.” Air Operated Vacuum Cleaners and Clean Up for Railcar Unloading The Pensacola terminal unloads Portland cement from bottom dump railcars into silos via a boot connector with foam seals. The boot-seal connects hopper-car unloading gates to a pit where a screw conveyor transfers cement to bucket elevators that dump into the silos. “Sometimes these foam seals blow out, they start leaking or maybe one of the boots will drop and then cement will hit the ground instead of in the pit,” says Rodgers. “The shop vacuums weren’t powerful enough to clean up five to six hundred pounds of cement so we used a lot of shovels and wheelbarrows.” When Rodgers was searching for a more effective method of clean up, John White, VP Logistics at Buzzi Unicem USA, suggested he look at a Belleville, NJ-based VAC-U-MAX that introduced the first air operated vacuum cleaner in 1954. White was familiar with the www.airbestpractices.com 25 http://www.ultra-air.com http://www.ultra-air.com http://www.airbestpractices.com

Table of Contents Feed for the Digital Edition of Compressed Air Best Practices - February 2008

Compressed Air Best Practices - February 2008 Contents From the Editor Utility-Air News February Audit of the Month: Dense-Phase Transport System Wreaks Havoc on Compressed Air System Real World Best Practices: Material Conveying with Pneumatic and Vacuum Systems Industrial Vacuum Cleaners Use Compressed Air in Portland Cement Manufacturing Processes The Numatics Air Preparation Group The Ins and Outs of Vacuum Generators Dekker Vacuum Technologies Do Your Meetings Sabotage Your Profits? Resources for Energy Engineers Wall Street Watch Advertiser Index Job Market

Compressed Air Best Practices - February 2008

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