Greetings and salutations, buenos tardes y saludos.

The conveyor equipment manufacturing association is a good source as well as there is a considerable amount of information available from many reputable vendors on the forum web site. it can be accessed by placing a querry in the search box.

(Krupp), (metso minerals), (Rahco) Lyn bates , George Baker and Mr. Larry Nordell, Joseph Dos Santos, Anil Seth, Amrit Agwar here on the web site forum to name but a few have much information available for your use.

A lot of factors are involved in any stockpiling and stock pile reclaiming operation. Planning and replanning is the key.

1. What is the desired stock pile size? a week, a month, bi-monthly storage capacity, or is an annual stock pile campaign desired?

a. A twenty four or thirty six inch conveyor is capable of handling this demand load depending on operating hours.

b. There are a quite a few methods for reclaiming materials from

a stock pile; A bucket wheel stacker/ reclaimer mounted on crawler tracks or a linear rail line along the edge of the stock pile is one and it allows you to stack and then reclaim the stock piled materials.

b. An elevated stationary conveyor with a belt tripper or radial rail mounted stacking conveyor with or with out a tripper and ship trimmer is another option(a ship trimmer throws the material a large distance). I have listed other options as well described below.

2. How much cooling pile capacity are you expecting to install if any? See above.

3. What provisions for fire protection are desired? full coverage at all points with deluge guns with fresh water/foam or salt water and what if any fire suppression on the conveying system either truck or conveyor belt or dedicated stock piling railway to a side dump stock pile over a trestle.

4. Is the stock pile going to be open to air or covered? thats a big one.

5. Stock pile design is another issue that must be dealt with.

A fan stock shaped stock pile or a rectangular with a trapezoid design? the latter allows for a ramp to be plowed up one corner to aid in stock piling higher if desired. It can be done with a fan but a little more preparation is needed-wider and longer fan size to allow push back.

A long elevated railroad trestle above the stock pile allows an easy method of dumping using a radio controlled in railbed car mover as belly dump gondolas are used since the radio controlled car mover will not be affected by the incline as all motion is linear in either direction no matter the incline.

The above would allow one to develop a large rectangular stock pile with ease and use a small earth mover/dozer with cleated tracks.

6. Conveying coke from the ovens;

Will you simply dump the hot coke in a gondola rail car and allow it to cool prior to movement from A to B or dump, it stock pile it, and reload it to be moved to the loading point?

An option for reclaiming can be as simple as a WR Stamler belt feeder fed by a tracked dragline or excavator feeding a dedicated belt at the edge of the stock pile loading on to the conveyor feeding the rail loading point near the stock pile.

A surge pile could be designed with an underground gallery and numerous drawpoints or a single drawpoint which is less work all the way around.

What rolling stock if any do you plan on obtaining or will you depend on the national railway for narrow gauge gondola cars?

Ideally a small geodesic dome made by (www.Geometrica.com) for example with six to ten thousand tons capacity placed on a large concrete wall for a foundation and installed with an apron feeder drawpoint or with a very small WR Stamler reclaimer(which allows mobility with a portable conveyor in one edge with a exterior entryway for a small permanent carry away conveyor to a load out would allow you to one store daily hot coke production with a cooled buffer tonnage and also allow you to have dry storage and an area where spontaneos combustion can be readily controlled with deluge guns, foam, water, and carbon dioxide gas flooding.

A bunker is not really a goof idea in my opinion simply from a firefighting stand point-think about it as the coke is carbon an excellent fuel source.

The loading facility:

Are you going to have a loading silo or a large volume open hopper fed by conveyor to flood load the railcars? the open hopper will take less installation time.

Will you use a radio control car mover in the track bed to move the cars independent of the locomotive?-this is good option as the cars can be flooded loaded all at once with out disconnecting the locomotive string from the cars.

The unloading facility:

Do you intend to use a rotary car dumper with bathtub gondola cars-(these cars have no bottom dump doors/hatches) or standard gondolas with dump doors to either dump conventionaly over an open trestle or use the same cars with a rotary car dumper?

The rotary car dumper allows this type of flexibility and there are several hundred of these units installed world wide.

A radio controlled car mover in the track bed(such as built by WR Stamler) is the simplest and safest method to move the railroad cars without the use of a locomotive and additional personell which reduces the possibility of personal injury or death from rolling stock movements.

The rolling stock/railcars is the other issue; cars are ordered with rotary knuckles to allow dumping with a rotary car dumper but they must be disconnected(at the stationary knuckle end) to do so and then reconnected to the the empty string of cars to move them through the rotary car dumper which is easily accomplished with the radio control car mover. A standard gondola must be disconnected from both the leading car and the full car string to be dumped.

A car dumping system utilising a trestle allows one to leave the cars connected at all times and empty the string and pull it back and away from the trestle but provisions must be made to tie down the cars prior to release by the car mover or allow the locomotive to be connected at all times providing air pressure to allow brake release and the charging/pressurising of the air brakes.

A machine called a (car hoe) allows one to safely remove stuck coal from a gondola car with ease using a hydraulic boom and shovel to dig out stuck material and they have units world wide as well (www.carhoe.com)

Another option for unloading a bottom dump car is a (plow conveyor) eliminating the need for an elevated trestle as well.

Moving the finished coke from the stock pile to the load out point with a capsule pipeline is another low cost option not requiring railcars or locomotives.

Electrical energy can be recovered by using synchronus electric motors as well on the return trip pushing the return air back through the blower exciting the electric field in the synchronus motor.

Please contact me at my e-mail address if you would like to learn more about capsule pipelines and to learn about a capsule pipeline in daily use since 1983 please google (Karasawa limestone mine).

They(the karasawa folks) replaced an existing railroad with a capsule pipeline to deliver limestone ore from the existing quarry to the mill and used the original rail bed from the mine to the mill to bury it(the capsule pipeline) underground following the railroad right of way.

lzaharis@lightlink.com

I am a former hard rock miner/diesel mechanic interested in capsule pipelines and radio controls and railroads.

Disclaimer: I do not represent, Krupp, Rahco, Metso minerals, Joy mining and manufacturing, WR Stamler, Karasawa limestone mine, Mitsubishi pipe, Cattron radio control equipment, Futaba radio control equipment or any other organization.

My apologies to my fellow board members if I have missed something. ■

This requires an understanding of you logistics. To be correct you need to balance the daily train takeout to your production rate. Otherwise you risk spending extortionate sums on expensive storage equipment. Pet coke is not stuff you can leave lying around, not even in the old days never mind nowadays.

For instance; if 6000tpd is your throughput & you have to meet fire prevention standards for handling coke then you could consider letting the stuff finally cool on the fire resistant belt if it is long enough. That could also cut down on your loading bunker capacity.

Why would you need a bunker? Because its the best way to load vehicles: because you would have already lifted the material quite a way on a stacker tripper before dropping it to ground and then digging it up again. All those activities create dust, or mud, and they waste energy, manpower & CAPEX.

Your rail service provider must be able to guarantee the service & you must meet the loading envelope to avoid demurrage. Add a days production to your cooling time storage requirement & that should be enough for your covered store. Then with extra cooling on the (covered) belt and a rapid load out bunker you are well safe (nearly said covered twice). Put a truck loading spout on the bunker as well, just in case. ■

You might also take into consideration the characteristices of the material in regard to temperature, moiture content, as wellas how oily the coke will be. This will affect conveyor belt construction in regard to cover compunds, gauges, etc. ■

Its fine for us to keep yapping about this subject but we have had no responses from south of the equator in regard to this.

A simple thank you; I found your response to my questions would be nice.

I think we are dealing with another fishing expedition in my opinion.

lzaharis ■

Agree with that. ■