Dear Mr Rao

For reclaiming at a rate of 3000 T/hr you dont have any choice.

Material degradation will certainly more compared to your conventional methods

Grab buckets will be better option compared to bucket wheel from material degradaton point of view

A R SINGH ■

It does not matter what product you are reclaiming as you will have degradation simply because of the fact that you are rehandling it multiple times.

You have not mentioned whether your iron is recyled iron waste, sponge or virgin ores so that adds to the question. It is simply a matter of what you are willing to accept and decide if you want to install a second compactor-assuming you are the original briqueter of the iron.

You will have to be understanding of the fact that if you use a reclaimer for stacking and reclaiming you will have to monitor the condition of the conveyor belt to be sure it does not catch fire also if and I am ssuming by your statements the iron is hot. ■

THe problem can be solved directly using discrete element method (DEM) with finite.

First, you need to define the breakage properties of the briqette by lab experiment. We have done this for Australia.s HBI. The you need to define the collector shape, articulation properties into the pile and rate of the collector ( front end loader or bucket wheel).

Breakage is exponential with contact pressure. COntact pressure can be determined with DEM for typical reclaim action of digging device.

A solution is made by building typical briquette pile and moving digging action through pile and recoding all chipping actions between briquettes and between briquettes and contacts with digging machine bucket.

Intuitively, I would bet on front end loader which [resumablyuses a bigger bucket. A bigger bucket means less handling with cutting surface of digging machine. However, subsequent actions of handling the briquettes need to be included to make a fair comparison.

A proper solution solved by DEM would be somewhat costly. Alternatively, measure it with an existing system by sampling would be less costly and more to the point. The DEM method could allow for finding ways to minimze breakage.

CDI did look into this at conveyor transfers, where poorly designed chutes produced almost 1% degradation per transfer. Redesign of the chute could eliminate about 95% of this breakage. ■

Has anybody used scraper type reclaimer for HBI? What is degradation and fines generation? ■

Dear Mr. Rao,

In Libya we are using Payloader to reclaim HBI to load in Ship at a rate of 1000 t/hr. You can use either Bucket wheel reclaimer or go for Payloader with reduce capacity of reclaiming rate.As per experience of Libya Iron & Steel , Payloader is better chiose.

Regards.

A.Banerjee ■

Why the question? What levels of degredation will you already acheive when you first deposit material in the yard? You seem to be putting the cart alongside the horse which is a clear recipe for circular progress. ■