Dear Surresh,

Is the cleat damage by abrasion at the loading point or by other means? I assume you are using cleats to transport a round like granular material up hill.

Maybe a little explanation of the installation and product will get you a better result.

Lawrence Nordell ■

Dear Shri Suresh,

I presume you are referring to use of Flexowell / Contiwell type of belt conveyor cum elevator. Such conveyors are extensively used for handling abrasive material like iron ore also. A well-known steel pant in Gujarat has dozens of such conveyors at critical location in the system. Hope this information will be of use to you. if you are referring to different type of conveyor, please clarify.

Regards,

Ishwar G Mulani.

Author of Book : Engineering Science and Application Design for Belt Conveyors.

Advisor / Consultant for Bulk Material Handling System & Issues.

Email : parimul@pn2.vsnl.net.in

Tel.: 0091 (0)20 25882916 ■

Dear Shri Suresh,

As there are no cleats in the Pocket Conveyor, produced by the manufacturer of the Flexowell Corrugated Sidewall conveyor, I presume that you are referring to corrugated sidewall conveyor systems - as produced bt Flexowall, Beltwall, et al.

The corrugated sidewall belt systems are successfully used around the world, including India. Your concern about cleat life and bonding is completely justified if you are considering an off-brand. Belt Wall (USA), Flexowall (Germany), and B&T SRL (Italy) all make a good product which should give you good service.

If your concern is with spillage, the corrugated sidewall belt system must be properly designed and used to minimize it. That is, the belts must have an adequate settling time before going into their vertical phase to avoid spillage. Also, it is important not to overload the belt (I know of one user tha brags about running at 120% of capicity, but complains about spillage).

If cleat wear and delamination are a major concern, you may want to consider alternatives, such as the Multi-Fold Belt system (Imperial Technologies) or High-Angle belt on belt systems (Svedala, Conyinental, or Des Santos International).

Your choice should be based on all of your concerns, including capital cost and maintainability.

Regards, ■

Greetings Suresh..

If you are designing from scratch, then try and stick to conventional conveyors.

If you are retrofitting a plant and are short of space, then consider pocket belts etc.

Your concern about cleats falling off is valid, and they fall off more frequently the higher the temperaure and density of material conveyed.

The side walls flex around the pulleys, and after a few years you get cracking in the side walls, especially if the pulleys are small in diameter.

The return belt either runs on short stub idlers, or the side walls run on flat return idlers.

The latter also reduces the life of the side walls.

Repairing pocket belts as well as the replacement thereof is good business, as they are very expensive belts.

Regards

LSL Tekpro ■

Having seen two small pocket belt elevators work in a Al. smelter, I would try to avoid them or design with adequate sizing. Issues I saw were:

high fatigue on short cycle time

spillage on return run

poor means of tracking/training

not much ability to control material feed into pocket > bounce out chance

small (min. recc.) pulley diameters leading to fatigue

They appear to be the answer to an application with some challenges in dimensional layouts and a need to reduce the number of equipment items used to go from A to Z.

Cheers

James ■

Dear Mr. Suresh,

It seems you are looking for corrugeted side wall & cleated belt for difficult to handle materials at steeper angle.

We have supplied more than 20 such conveyor systems; for coal, cement & alluminium and sand, saw dust, Buggasse etc.

You can convey material in horizontal as well as verticle direction, and at any angle in between. Also the gredient of belt can be changed at desired location. This a great design flexibility of the system. Also difficult to handle material, like steel balls can be easily handeld by this system.

If you are looking for such systems we can like to provide solution.

Also please note that we are in India and have developed such systems and they are in service since more then 7 years.

Regards,

Ketan Trivedi

Fairtech Engineering Co. ■

I strongly suggest that you consider a sandwich belt type high-angle conveyor, particularly the DSI Snake Sandwich High-Angle Conveyor by Dos Santos International. Our system uses all conventional conveyor equipment including smooth surfaced rubber belts that can be continuously scraped clean. Along the carrying path the conveyed material is sandwiched between two endless belts. The material is hugged gently but firmly from the sandwich entrance to the discharge point. The hugging develops the materials internal friction permitting conveying at high angles to 90 degrees (vertical). The writer has had many occasions to replace existing pocket belt systems with our sandwich belt conveyors. I am not aware of a single occasion where the reverse has happened.

Please visit our web site to learn more.

Joseph A. Dos Santos ■

Dear Mr.Suresh,

In TATA STEEL,we have used pocket belt conveyor handling COKE FINES & SINTER FINES & those are very abresive material.Belt supplied by FLEXOWELL.In NACAST, Raipur, the same conveyor is handling NUT COKE .Please note that pipe conveyor can be use upto inclination of 22 deg. but pecket belt can be use upto 90 deg.

Trust , this will help you.

Regards.

A.Banerjee ■

We have installed vertical pocket conveyor with side cleats[wall] supplied by Flexowell for handling of Iron pellets in our steel plant having speed of 1.25 m/s and capacity of 500 TPH.

We are facing problem of spillage once the belt becomes vertical. We have observed that the pellets gets entangled in the cleats of sidewall during loading and slips off when belt becomes vertical after passing over the bend pulley. The spilled material falls with gravity within a vertical height range of 70 mtr.

We have tried to arrest the spilled material by fixing pieces of flat belt at the edge of casing of vertical conveyor. But still the falling material with high velocity is dangerous for operation personnel in vicinity of belt area.

We also tried with glueing Foam pieces inside the cleats so that there is no room for pellets to get entangled. But over a period of time, [say 20 days], foam pieces are coming out.

Can somebody suggest some solution for this.

Rgds,

Jigishu Shah ■

HI,

M/S VIKRAM ISPAT IS HAVING A FLEXOWALL BELT CONVEYOR FOR HANDLING DRI TO FEED REACTOR TOWER.THE HEIGHT OF THE CONVEYOR IS APPOX.100M AND SUPPLIED BY DELHI COMPANY.

THANKS ■

Dear Mister Jigishu Shah,

we have read your problem concerning spillage at this forum and want to ask you courtliest, if this problem still exists. We are more than 25 years in the range of Conveyor technology active and have great experience. So please contact us if you need informations or expert advice for this or future projects.

Kind Regards

Richard Lippert

■

Dear Mr. Shah,

I have came to know your problem of spilage of material in verticle side. I suggest you to check the rate of flow at the feeding & speed of the belt. Please note that capacity of these conveyor sharply decreases with incerase in gradient. The feed point is in horizontal section & hence can handle maximum material while in verticle section the its lowest, & the at the deflactor roll the material tend to spill. You can also check this by % fill in the verticle section in running codition. If the % is high you should increase the belt speed appropriately.

Regards,

Ketan

Fairtech Engineering Co ■