The infrastructure for moving grain from one point to another includes small country elevators, larger elevators, large grain terminals, trucks, trains, barges, and ocean-going shipping vessels. And every time grain is moved from one of these points to another, dust is generated. Dust which must be controlled, captured, and contained.
One innovative approach to dust management is to collect and manage dust at the point of generation – at the source. Capturing and controlling dust at its source provides several benefits including:
Reduction or Elimination of waste streams.
When captured dust is retained within the process generating it, it stays as part of the revenue producing product stream. Instead of turning a portion of the product into a pile of wasted dust, it remains as part of the product stream that has economic value.
Reduction or Elimination of waste stream equipment.
When dusts produced in a process are separated from the original process stream, they require independent material handling equipment and process equipment. Keeping the dust within the product stream minimizes the cost and maintenance of additional material handling equipment.
Minimizing the amount of duct runs.
It takes a tremendous amount of energy to move dust-laden air through long duct runs. Installing point-of-use dust collectors closer to the dust-generating process minimizes or eliminates unnecessary ducts, which saves energy.
Reduced duct maintenance.
Minimizing duct runs reduces maintenance costs, eliminates wasted air from leaks in the duct system and eliminates costly lining of ducts.
Easier installation.
Less ducting also equates to a simpler and easier installation for dust collection equipment. Smaller, lighter collectors mean less support infrastructure in grain handling facilities where collectors are often not placed on the ground.
Improved uptime and reliability for the system as a whole.
With centralized dust collection, when a dust collection system requires servicing the entire dust handling system, and often the entire grain handling facility, must be shut down to resolve the problem. With a series of point-of-use collectors, when an individual leg of the process is taken offline for maintenance, the rest of the system continues to operate. This provides a level of redundancy to the system, leading to improved uptimes for the facility. Other potential benefits of point-of-use collectors include:
- Minimizing impact on uptime due to servicing – minimize downtime to allow more flexibility in servicing scheduling (20 minute cycle vs. 4-8 hours); design characteristics that simplify and speed servicing actions.
- Localized systems minimize the impact on total operations when a single component has issues.
- Localized systems improve energy utilization, allowing operations to use energy only when needed to manage dust in each area. This approach eliminates wasted energy used to pull air from areas not handling dust.
- Technologies that extend filter life to reduce service frequency
Supporting a point-of-use innovative dust control solution requires a dust filtration product with a very small footprint, but with robust performance to handle moderate to large air volumes. Traditional bag houses and cartridge collectors are generally either too large for point-of-use installation, or when sized to fit, are unable to handle the necessary air volumes.
Newer products on the market, such as the Donaldson®Torit® PowerCore® CP-Series dust collector, work very well as a point-of-use source collector. As a small, light, easy-to-maintain collector capable of handling the required air volume, this product offers distinct advantages over the more typical bag house technologies, which have been in use for over 40 years.
Products like this offer the ability to collect materials at the source, and allow dust control with a more manageable investment in energy costs. Point-of-use collectors reduce air volume for dust control; reduce horsepower investment, and minimize operational energy costs. With its smaller size and low profile, the Torit PowerCore CP collector can be installed at multiple locations in new facilities as source collectors and can squeeze into tight spaces in existing facilities (due to its smaller size) to solve nuisance dust problems.
