Ensuring effective control of dust particulates (e.g. cereal, sugar, or cement) helps diminish explosion risks and ensures compliance with increasingly stringent emissions targets in the industrial segment.
And to keep on top of this, it is vital that dust collectors are continually monitored to assess performance and gauge whether they are delivering the best value to the end-user. Monitoring can help demonstrate that dust particulates are being captured, therefore minimizing dry cargo wastage. Good quality monitoring also facilitates predictive maintenance, reducing the chances of filter failure, which can cause avoidable repair and maintenance costs, as well as downtime on the dockside.
This is worth keeping in mind, when you consider that failures not only result in costly repairs but also, potentially, the substantial losses associated with having a ship standing idle as it is unable to load/unload. With the ongoing pressures on supply chains and widely-publicized congestion at the world’s ports, operators quickly realize that a dust collector might be only a small detail in overall operations, but it can have big consequences if something goes wrong.
Digital delay
Given the above, it is interesting to note that many industrial sites, including dock facilities, are still using the manual “clipboard and pen” approach to monitoring and assessing the health of their dust collectors. In fact, a recent survey of industrial companies conducted by Donaldson revealed almost a third of respondents still capture dust collector data through manual recording, even though more than half (56%) viewed dust collection as critical to the smooth running of their operations while less than 1 in 10 (7%) had actually commissioned digital services to support in this area of their operations.
Connected dust filtration is now well-established in several industries and companies in the dry cargo sector are well-positioned to take advantage of the benefits it offers. By using a connected dust filtration solution, such as the iCueTM from Donaldson, the capability exists for bulk handling personnel to monitor dust collector performance digitally, via connected devices. In fact, Donaldson’s innovative iCue Connected Filtration Service eliminates the need to check dust collector readings manually as these can instead be accessed remotely via a mobile phone, laptop, or tablet.
Sensors from the iCue track performance data from each connected device and these are then sent to a secure cloud. From here it is translated into actionable insights that users can view and analyze on a user-friendly dashboard. At a single click of a button, facility managers can view the status of all dust collectors across their organization and there is also the option to customize alerts and notifications to suit requirements.
By implementing connected filtration services, Donaldson estimates industrial facility operators can reduce their monitoring tasks by up to 50%. When you consider the annual savings of eliminating in-person checks for every filter, it’s easy to see how this can quickly add up to a cost saving of several hundred hours over the course of a year, not to mention the need to dedicate less manpower to the task, allowing valuable labor to be focused on higher priority areas and tasks.
Long-term understanding
In addition to reducing costs and downtime, taking your dust control digital also offers long-term benefits through better streamlining of data and providing legacy information that can be used to assess the long-term effectiveness of a facility’s operations. Also, when considered against the backdrop of Covid-19, the advantages of automating an essential function are more immediately apparent. For the bulk handling sector, a connected, dust collection monitoring system is a sound investment that will pay dividends throughout these pandemic times and beyond.
