BEUMER Group delivers palletiser to Indonesian cement manufacturer PT Semen Tonasa:
The cement manufacturer PT Semen Tonasa relies on a palletising solution of BEUMER Group to be able to accelerate processes and relieve the personnel from heavy physical work. Photo: BEUMER Group
PT SemenTonasa ‘s plant on the island of Bali has commissioned BEUMER Group to supply a palletising system for 40 and 50 kilogram bags. This enables the manufacturer to accelerate processes and relieve his personnel of heavy physical work. The target: installation and commissioning should take place in the third quarter of 2022.
PT Semen Tonasa is part of Semen Indonesia Group, the largest cement manufacturer in Southeast Asia. In Indonesia alone, the group has a market share of more than 50%. At its Celukan Bawang plant on the island of Bali, employees stack the 40 and 50 kg cement bags on pallets, which are then fed into the packaging system. A fork-lift truck takes the palletised and packaged stacks and loads them onto the loading spaces of the trucks. For the personnel, this is not only physically very strenuous, but also takes a lot of time. In order to accelerate this process and relieve the personnel, PT Semen Tonasa has commissioned BEUMER Group to supply a layer palletiser.
The cement manufacturer has opted for the palletiser of the system supplier, because the system exactly complies with the required technical specifications. The palletiser is characterised by its very good stack quality and its reliability. A multi-program interface includes all common packing patterns, and can be individually adjusted to the different requirements of the building materials industries.
Global influences such as delivery bottlenecks, shortages of raw materials and logistics problems continue to massively disrupt the supply chains. Nevertheless, the system provider will be able to send the machine to the customer in seven months. The target is to install and commission the machine in the third quarter of 2022.
bauma is the world’s foremost meeting point for the construction, building materials and mining machinery industry – and the BEUMER Group will present its extensive product portfolio to visitors in Hall B2 at Booth 413 from October 24-30 in Munich. Since May of this year, the full-service provider has been offering its entire product spectrum, ranging from bulk material handling, and processing plants to conveyor technology. Customers are provided with complete material transport solutions from a single source. The BEUMER Group has been firmly anchored in the bulk solids handling technology market for decades. The acquisition of the FAM Group in May significantly strengthened the system provider’s position in the minerals and mining markets. The FAM Group has its headquarters in Magdeburg, Germany. It is an internationally active, medium-sized group and a manufacturer of systems for opencast mining, stockyards, mineral processing, ports, conveying and loading.
As one of the leading suppliers, the BEUMER Group offers machines along the entire transport chain for bulk goods. Efficient solutions, including the extraction, conveying, loading, storage and processing of various raw materials, are developed and implemented for various industries. The BEUMER Group combines many years of serial production know-how with customized manufacturing experience, offering high-quality engineering and extensive services. The Group’s employees are highly skilled in loading systems, opencast mining, storage, processing, conveying, and port technologies.
The BEUMER Group delivers turnkey complexes for the extraction, transport, and processing of raw materials, thanks to its wide range of large-scale equipment and individual machines for opencast mining, such as bucket wheel excavators, belt wagons and conveyor systems. Mine operators can transport various bulk materials with BEUMER’s pipe and overland conveyors, even over long distances and above terrain which is often rough and impassable. Steep gradients and tight curve radii enable individual routes to be adapted to the topography and the task at hand. The BEUMER Group can customize the systems to match the conveying task and topography exactly. The system provider relies on modern planning and layout tools to support plant operators early in the project and design the ideal conveying solution together with the customer.
Sand and gravel, clay and limestone, gypsum, building site rubble – the reference list of the BEUMER Group’s materials is extensive. From a technical standpoint, the systems are always at the heart of production. The product portfolio includes extensive storage space technology, loading systems and various crushing & screening plants, including impact, hammer, single & double-roll crushers, plus many more crushers and mills.
Cement works rely on the BEUMER Group’s conveying solutions to move limestone over long distances from the quarry to the plant, making operations more sustainable and reducing the plant’s ecological footprint. The product range includes continuous ship unloaders with bucket elevators, mobile ship loading systems and stationery & movable ship loaders. The BEUMER portfolio also provides storage space technology for ports, enabling them to handle many types of bulk goods. Loading heads ensure fast and dust-free loading of bulk goods into silo vehicles or rail cars. The Group also offers loading and unloading systems for bags, enabling rail cars and ships to be dealt with quickly and safely. The BEUMER autopac automatically loads cement-filled bags onto truck beds, gently and in the desired packing pattern. The Group also offers complete high-performance packaging lines for bagged bulk goods, ranging from filling and palletizing lines to stretch hood packaging.
Joint team spirit
The FAM Group, one of the world’s leading full-service providers of bulk material handling and processing plants, is also a member of the BEUMER Group. Photo: BEUMER / Christian Bierwagen
The BEUMER Group and FAM will showcase their products together in the trade fair booth in Munich. The Magdeburg-based company has been part of the BEUMER Group since May this year. The FAM Group plans, designs, and manufactures turnkey plants and systems for mining, extracting, loading and storing minerals, raw materials and goods. In addition to expanding the BEUMER Group’s portfolio, FAM’s know-how and global positioning also complement BEUMER’s competence in the project planning of plants. FAM brings planning, engineering, and the entire value chain to the BEUMER Group, as well as aftersales service.
With Rudolf Hausladen, the BEUMER Group has a new CEO. What does this mean for the group of companies? And what is planned for the future? Together with Dr. Christoph Beumer, the new CEO answered questions about the industry and current topics at a global Media Meeting.
Rudolf Hausladen has been the new CEO of the BEUMER Group since 1st June 2022. Photo: BEUMER
“I want to continue to lead the company in the same tradition and spirit of the BEUMER family,” Rudolf Hausladen promises. He has been the new CEO since 1st of June 2022 and succeeds Dr. Christoph Beumer, who has led BEUMER Group as CEO for more than 20 years and will move to the Advisory Board by the end of the year. Under the title “Change of Management at BEUMER Group”, the group organised an international Media Meeting at the beginning of August. Trade press journalists from five continents were represented, reporting to the cement and building materials industries as well as to sectors such as mining, intralogistics, packaging technology, chemicals and petrochemicals.
What is the market situation in the individual industries? What strategies does the BEUMER Group have, and what developments and innovations is the systems provider currently working on? Dr. Christoph Beumer and Rudolf Hausladen will deal with these important topics for the future.
Dr. Christoph Beumer, as managing partner, has steered the fortunes of the group of companies for more than 20 years. Photo: BEUMER
Under the leadership of Dr. Christoph Beumer, the company has developed from a German mechanical engineering company into an international systems supplier and plant manufacturer. The focus is always on quality leadership in order to provide customers with the best possible solutions for their business. With now more than 5,000 employees representing the BEUMER culture worldwide, the business volume amounts of about 1.1 billion euros. Long-term and far-sighted decisions, such as anti-cyclical acquisitions, have had a lasting positive impact on the business. This also includes the acquisition of FAM Magdeburg. This expands the BEUMER Group’s portfolio in bulk solids technology.
“We are only successful with a deep understanding of our customers’ business and processes,” Rudolf Hausladen is convinced. “This is the key to understanding their challenges and being able to offer the best solutions for them.”
Rudolf Hausladen wants to use this knowledge and also strategically align the BEUMER Group’s digital offering with the ever-growing market requirements. Customers should benefit from clear added value through smart software solutions. The aim is to achieve the best possible results in optimising customer processes, for example in e-commerce, in the CEP sector, in materials handling technology or in baggage handling at airports. Data analytics is playing an increasingly important role in generating further information in real time. “The demand for software solutions in intralogistics is immense and will continue to increase in the coming years,” adds Hausladen.
This year, the Institute of Research & Data Aggregation GmbH honored BEUMER Maschinenfabrik for the quality and individuality of its Promotion of Young Talent scheme. This anchors the systems provider from Beckum in the top one percent of training companies in Germany. Various employers from all industries and regions were compared in an independent survey as part of the “Top Trainers” study.
This year again, BEUMER Maschinenfabrik in Beckum showed that it was one of the best training companies in Germany. The Düsseldorf Institute of Research & Data Aggregation confirmed the result in its “Top Trainers” study, which determines the top one percent of the best training centers in Germany.
“We are very proud that we have again won a prestigious award. We aim to inspire as many young people as possible to start an apprenticeship with us in the future,” says Michael Dilla, Head of Technical Vocational Training at BEUMER Maschinenfabrik. The company trains young adults to become industrial management assistants, IT specialists, industrial and construction mechanics and mechatronics and electronics technicians (m/f/X) . August 2022 will see twenty-two young people launch their careers at BEUMER. As part of a planned joint training program, two more trainees from partner companies will also complete part of their apprenticeships with BEUMER.
The categories in the study included the company’s internal and external communications, former, current and potential trainees’ evaluations, exceptional auditing results, and voluntary self-reporting. Potential trainees receive orientation with the help of freely available data. The data sources include the rating portal Kununu, Capital, Ausbildung.de, Territory, Bertelsmann, Deutschlandtest, Focus and Great Place to Work.
The BEUMER Group goes online with its Mining Knowledge Hub – www.beumer.com/mining-hub: Users can expect highly informative news from the sector. The platform is continuously being expanded.
The BEUMER Group answers challenging questions about mining with its new Mining Knowledge Hub. Photo: BEUMER Group GmbH & Co. KG
Are belt conveyors more profitable than trucks for transporting raw materials as efficiently as possible from the open pit mine to processing or shipping facilities which are usually several miles away? If so, are there any examples for successfully installed system solutions for this? How can the belt of a conveyor system be replaced without long downtimes? And what impact is digitalization having on the mining industry? How can a mine operator respond to trends, and what influences the industry in the first place? These are just a few of the questions that the BEUMER Group’s experts will fully answer in the Mining Knowledge Hub and also address in the future. In-depth, real-world expertise awaits users, providing guidance for their daily challenges.
“We will regularly fill this knowledge platform with new content that is relevant to the industry,” promises Dr. Kilian Neubert, Global Head of Mining, BEUMER Group. Users can find the presented information at www.beumer.com/mining-hub. The new knowledge platform is available in English for the global market.
The BEUMER Group, Beckum/Germany, a leading international manufacturer of intralogistics systems in the field of conveying and loading systems, palletizing and packaging technology, sorting and distribution systems has acquired FAM GmbH, a supplier of conveying systems and loading technology. The contracts were signed with the aim of completing the transaction until the end of May 2022.
This significantly strengthens BEUMER´s market position in the large equipment sector as well. The FAM Group, with headquarters in Magdeburg (Figure 1), is an internationally operating medium-sized group with a tradition as a manufacturer of conveying systems going back to the 19th century. FAM is one of the world’s leading full-range suppliers of bulk materials handling and processing plants. FAM successfully plans, designs, and manufactures turnkey plants and systems for mining, conveying, loading and storing minerals, raw materials and goods. FAM employs approximately 750 people at its headquarters and subsidiaries in Brazil, Chile, China, Canada and India, as well as re-presentatives worldwide.
According to the analysis of industry experts the business area of the two companies complement each other ideally. With more than 4,500 employees over 70 countries, BEUMER is focusing also on conveying technology in mining and minerals. For decades BEUMER has also been consistently established in the bulk materials technology market. FAM’s leading technology for transporting and processing minerals fits well with the portfolio of BEUMER.
In the future, this competence of BEUMER will be supplemented by the know-how and global set-up of FAM in the project planning of systems. In addition to planning and engineering, FAM provides the entire value chain, including after-sales service to BEUMER. As a global solution provider, FAM has been combining expertise, engineering and project management for over 100 years.
BEUMER offers FAM a long-term perspective based on the highest quality, sustainability and innovation. As a family-run and 100 % self-financed company, BEUMER has been developing tailor-made system solutions for mining for almost 90 years.
Christoph Beumer, managing partner and CEO of BEUMER, confirms that this takeover underpins the company’s long-term orientation in the segment of extraction, processing and handling of raw materials. The company motto, according to Beumer is long-term success and not short-term profit. It is necessary to act in a straight line even though difficult economic time. Beumer emphasizes, that they have done their homework in recent years and now they consistently investing in a qualitative expansion of their portfolio.
FAM Managing Director Torsten Gerlach: “The management is pleased to have found with the BEUMER Group a strategic investor. We see great potential for sustainable growth in orders and sales. In this context, the acquisition makes much sense.”
SOLIDS, which will take place on 22 and 23 June in Dortmund, is the most important trade fair for granulate, powder and bulk material technologies. BEUMER Group will be in attendance at SOLIDS in hall 7 at booth U09. The system provider will present solutions for conveying, loading, palletising and packaging various bulk materials for the cement, building materials and chemical industries.
The system provider supplies high-capacity belt bucket elevators for the vertical transport of powdery or small-sized materials. Photo: BEUMER
BEUMER Group’s product portfolio in the conveying technology sector includes curved troughed belt conveyors and pipe conveyors. These can be used by companies in the cement, building materials or chemical industry to transport various bulk materials even over long distances. Depending on the type of conveyor and the properties of the material to be conveyed, angles of inclination of up to 15 degrees can be achieved. The throughput capacity of BEUMER Group conveying systems is up to 10,000 tons per hour. The system provider relies on modern planning and layout tools to support the owners at an early stage of the project and to design the best conveying solution.
For vertical transport, BEUMER provides high-capacity belt bucket elevators which are primarily used for powdery or small-sized materials. Conveying heights of up to 200 metres are possible. In order to transport coarse and highly abrasive bulk materials, belt bucket elevators are upgraded with heavy-duty technology developed by BEUMER Group. The specially designed buckets in combination with the proven steel cord belt enable large conveying heights and capacities.
For safe and economic transport of hot material like cement clinker, BEUMER Group provides apron conveyors with a belt or chain as the traction element. These conveyors can handle angles of inclination up to 60 degrees and speeds up to 0.6 metres per second. In case of belt apron conveyors, the conveying system is based on the proven belt technique that is also used in bucket elevators.
To ensure efficient loading, BEUMER Group also supplies ship loaders. The systems are equipped with a dedusting unit which keeps the process emission-free. In addition, bulk loading heads which are used to load bulk materials into silo vehicles quickly and without dust are available. They are designed according to the double-wall system. The material inlet and the dedusting unit are separated from each other.
Filling, palletising and packaging
BEUMER fillpac FFS – high throughput, availability and a compact design are key features of the system. Photo: BEUMER
Bulk materials from the chemical industry are transported from the silo via a conveyor line to the form fill seal system BEUMER fillpac FFS. This highly efficient filling machine forms a ready-made PE tubular film into a bag and fills it with the customer’s engineering plastics such as PE, PP, PA or PS granules. Reliable, gentle and sustainable filling is also possible for salts or fertilisers.
The BEUMER paletpac high-capacity layer palletiser palletises 5,500 bags per hour in a flexible, precise and stable way Photo: BEUMER
In order to palletise bulk materials from the cement, building material or chemical industry, BEUMER Group has the high-capacity palletiser of the BEUMER paletpac series in its product range. They can be quickly assembled thanks to the modular design, are easily accessible for maintenance, can be operated intuitively and flexibly adapted to different packing patterns.
The easy, intuitive and reliable operation of the new BEUMER stretch hood A is appealing to customers. Photo: BEUMER
Depending on the product requirements, the BEUMER paletpac can be equipped with a clamp-type or twin-belt turning device, which positions the bags smoothly, quickly and exactly. The BEUMER stretch hood A high-capacity packaging system then packages the palletised goods with a highly elastic stretch hood, thus fixing them securely to the pallet for transport and transshipment and protecting them from dust, rain or other atmospheric influences during outdoor storage.
With this modernisation, the cement manufacturer was able to increase the conveying capacity of the bucket elevators for the cement silo feed. Photo: BEUMER
Outdated technologies often lead to increased maintenance, and that can rapidly become expensive. A cement plant owner faced this problem with his bucket elevators. An analysis carried out by the BEUMER Customer Support team made things clear: It is not necessary to replace the whole systems, but only components. The service experts were able to modernise the bucket elevators and make them more efficient, even if the systems were not from BEUMER.
“Right from the beginning, our three bucket elevators caused problems”, says Frank Baumann, plant manager at a medium-sized cement company based in Erwitte, North Rhine-Westphalia, near Soest/Germany. In 2014, the manufacturer also established a plant in Duisburg. “Here, we produce blast furnace cement, using a central chain bucket elevator as circulation bucket elevator for the vertical mill and two belt bucket elevators for the silo feeding,” describes Baumann. The central chain bucket elevator on the vertical mill was unusually loud right from the beginning and there was also an immense chain vibration of more than 200 millimetres. Although the original supplier made several improvements, a high level of wear and tear was evident after only a short running time. “We had to service the systems more and more frequently”, says plant manager Baumann. Of course, this was expensive, on the one hand because of the downtimes, and on the other because of the spare parts.
The drive pulleys are equipped with segmented laggings. A steady running of the belt is ensured by the crowned drive pulleys. Photo: BEUMER
Frequent downtimes, high costs Due to the frequent downtimes on the vertical mill circulation bucket elevator, BEUMER Group was contacted in 2018. The system supplier not only supplies bucket elevators and modernises them if necessary, but also optimises existing systems of other suppliers. “In cases like this, operators of cement plants are often faced with the question of whether a completely new plant or a possible conversion would be the more economical and targeted measure,” explains Marina Papenkort, Area Sales Manager in the Customer Support division at BEUMER Group. Because modernisation can be worthwhile: “With our customer support, we help our customers to fulfil future performance and technology requirements in a cost-efficient way in the context of modernisations and modifications”, says Papenkort.
“Typical challenges of our customers include performance improvements, adaptations to modified process parameters, new materials, optimisation of availability and extension of the maintenance cycles, designs easy to maintain as well as reduced noise levels”. In addition, all new developments with regard to Industry 4.0, such as belt monitoring or continuous temperature monitoring, are included in the modifications. BEUMER Group offers everything from one single source, from technical dimensioning to assembly on site. The advantage is to have only one contact and thus to benefit from reduced organisational and coordination expenses.
The profitability and especially the availability play a crucial role for customers, because modifications are often an interesting alternative to new constructions. In case of modernisation measures, as many components and structures as possible are kept – in many cases also the steel structure. This alone reduces material costs by approximately 25% compared to a new construction. In the case of this company, the bucket elevator head, the chimneys, the drive unit and the bucket elevator boot could be reused. “In addition, the assembly effort is lower, and so the downtime is usually much shorter,” explains Papenkort. This leads to a faster return on investment compared to a new construction.
No material can penetrate between belt and bucket. Photo: BEUMER
Heavy Duty for coarse-grained material “We retrofitted the central chain bucket elevator to a high-capacity belt bucket elevator type HD (heavy duty),” reports Papenkort. Belts with wire-free zones, and to which the buckets are fastened, are used for this type of bucket elevators just as with all BEUMER belt bucket elevators. In case of products from competitors, often the steel cords are cut through when mounting the buckets. Thus the steel cords are no longer covered, which might result in moisture penetration and, as a consequence, lead to corrosion and damaged supporting cords. “That’s not the case with our systems. The tensile strength of the bucket elevator belt is completely kept,” explains Papenkort.
The buckets are mounted with forged segments and screws on the back side of the belt. Photo: BEUMER
Another important factor is the belt clamping connection: The rubber of the steel cord ends is first removed on all BEUMER steel cord belts. The technicians divide the ends into individual strands in the U-shaped part of the belt clamping connection, twist and cast it with white metal. “Thus, the customer benefits from a huge time advantage,” says Papenkort. “After casting, the junction is completely cured after a very short time and the belt is ready for use”.
For a steady running of the belt In order to enable a steady running of the belt and to extend the service life in view of the abrasive material, the BEUMER team exchanged the existing segmented laggings of the drive pulley by specially adapted ones equipped with ceramic. These are crowned for a steady straight run. The design, which is easy to maintain, enables to quickly replace the single segments of the segmented lagging through the inspection hatches. Thus, it is no longer necessary to exchange the complete drive pulley. The segmented laggings are rubberised, with linings made of full ceramics or steel. The choice depends on the material conveyed.
The parallel take-up device ensures that the take-up pulley is limited to parallel movement. Photo: BEUMER
The buckets are adapted to the crowned shape of the drive pulley and thus lie flat on, which considerably increases the service life of the belt. Their shape allows for smoother running and therefore less noise generation. Depending on the intended use, the operator receives the buckets in the design that suits him best. They can for example have a rubber bottom or be made of high-quality steel. The proven BEUMER HD technology impresses with a special bucket connection: In order to prevent coarse-grained material from penetrating between bucket and belt, the bucket is provided with an elongated back plate, which can be mounted flush to the bucket elevator belt. In addition, with the HD technology, the buckets are mounted firmly to the back of the belt with forged segments and screws. “All the screws would have to get lost for a bucket to tear out,” explains Papenkort.
To keep everything running straight In order to achieve a permanently correct tensioning of the belt, BEUMER mounted an external parallel take-up device without product contact in Duisburg, which ensures that the take-up pulley is limited to parallel movement. The tension bearing is designed as inner bearing in a completely encapsulated construction. The bearing housings are filled with oil.
“A part of our HD technology is the cage-type foot pulley which is easy to maintain. The bars are hardened due to the abrasive material conveyed and screwed into the cage-type foot pulley to enable a rapid replacement. The take-up pulley is equipped with a double deflection cone, which reliably prevents damage to the belt caused by jammed bulk materials,” explains Papenkort.
To avoid caking, the take-up pulley is designed as cage-type foot pulley and is provided with a double deflection cone. For this order, the screwed and hardened version of the cage-type foot pulley has been used. Photo: BEUMER
Satisfaction led to follow-up order “This modification enabled us to increase the availability of our vertical mill circulation bucket elevator and to be more competitive on the long term,” Frank Baumann says happily. “Compared to a new investment, it was possible to reduce our costs and we were operating faster. At the beginning we had to convince ourselves more than once that the retrofitted circulation bucket elevator was in operation, because the noise level had changed drastically and we were not familiar with the smooth running from the previous chain bucket elevator”.
The company was so enthusiast about the retrofitting that it commissioned BEUMER Group to optimise also the other two bucket elevators with regard to the conveying capacity. Also in this case, the operator complained about continuous off-tracking, buckets hitting the shaft casing and difficult maintenance conditions. “In addition, we wanted to further increase the throughput of the mill and were therefore interested in greater flexibility regarding the conveying capacity of the bucket elevators,” explains Baumann. In 2020, the Customer Support of the system supplier also solved this problem. “We are completely satisfied,” states Baumann. “In the course of the retrofitting, we could also reduce the energy consumption of the bucket elevators”.
Since the late 1960s, BEUMER Group, Beckum/Germany, has been developing and producing curved overland conveyors, making the company one of the pioneers in this industry. Nothing has fundamentally changed in the functional principles of this technology since then – except for the feasible limits. With highly developed core components, precise calculation methods and own planning tools, the system provider continues to push the limits of what is technically feasible – while drastically reducing the time and costs involved both in the planning phase and in the handling of projects.
“Our belt conveyors are able to solve complex problems with regard to the transport of any bulk material whether in the mining or cement industry,” says Christoph Dorra, regional sales manager South America, Conveying and Loading Systems, at BEUMER. “While the basic task to transport bulk material from the material feed up to the final discharge point seems to be comparable, on closer inspection no system is similar to the other. The spectrum of potential conveyed materials alone requires individual consideration of the components to be used with regard to wear resistance or the maximum permissible gradients of a conveyor.” In addition, the mass flow to be conveyed and the height to be overcome are the main factors determining the dimensioning of the drive unit of an overland conveyor. “A further challenge is posed by systems at high altitudes,” says Dorra. At altitudes exceeding 4,000 m, as it is often the case in the South American Andes, e. g., it must be considered that the air pressure and thus the density of the air decreases with increasing altitude. This reduces both the cooling effect and the insulating capacity of the air. As a consequence, the drive units like frequency converters and electric motors do not achieve the specified rated power that applies for installation heights up to max. 1,000 m above mean sea level. This is the so-called derating factor.
In addition to the pure material specification and the mass to be conveyed over a certain height, the topography along the conveying route is of particular importance in the project planning. “In 2009, we implemented an overland conveyor in China that is able to curve on 85 % of the 12.5 km long conveyor line between the quarry and the cement plant. The system literally winds its way to the destination, without any transfer point,” reports Dorra.
Potential obstacles appeared in the form of residential areas, roads and rivers that had to be crossed, larger bodies of water or mountains that could not be crossed. “For us, these projects are a special attraction. Our target is to have as few transfer points as possible along the entire conveyor line,” says Dorra. This reduces both wear and tear and the environmental impact of dust, e. g., but also increases the availability of the overall system and significantly improves ease of maintenance.
A good example for such challenges is represented by the project of an American coal mine. Here, a BEUMER overland conveyor with a length of approximately 6.5 km conveys coal from a new underground mine portal to its main coal prepration plant (Figure 1). In the original request for quotation, the client requested four straight conveyors where three transfer towers would have been needed. For BEUMER, there was clear potential for optimisation here, of which the system provider was able to convince the customer.
The BEUMER team was also faced with exciting challenges in a Belgian project. Since the 1970s, the residues of a coal-fired power plant were landfilled on a fly ash stockpile. It was intended to transform the terrain into a nature park. In order to make this possible, the fly ash had to be conveyed to the Mass river, about 2 km away, where it is loaded onto ships for further transport. These bring the fly ash downstream to an adjacent cement plant, where it is recycled as an aggregate.
A pipe conveyor is used, whose enclosed design prevents the volatile material with the environment and enables a low-noise transport. This was of particular significance in this project as the conveyor runs over roads, rails and residential areas. In the residential areas, a particularly noise-reduced idler design developed by BEUMER is used, which meets the high noise protection requirements in this area. The prescribed limit of 35 db at a distance of 10 m from the conveyor roughly corresponds to a very quiet room fan at low speed. Here, the system also achieves a slope of 23°, which can be easily implemented with a pipe conveyor. Because of the rough terrain, special cranes and even helicopters were used during the installation.
How does the system provider manage to provide the appropriate solution for each of these applications? “We can draw on our comprehensive experience,” says Martin Rewer, team lead overland conveyor at BEUMER. BEUMER installed the first conveyor of this type with horizontal curves already in 1969; the first downhill conveyor with regenerative drive in 1980. Since the 1990s, BEUMER has also developed into one of the leading suppliers of pipe conveyors. In 2019, two systems were commissioned in China that, with 5,500 t/h of iron ore, defined the current performance peak of the globally installed systems of this technology.
Since the first overland conveyor with horizontal curves was constructed in 1969, components such as idlers, belts and drives have continued to develop. In addition, the systems are becoming larger and longer and the routes more complex. This resulted in the necessity to also constantly improve the calculation and the planning tools in order to not only withstand the requirements, but to even be one step ahead.
In the first step of project planning, the systems must be dimensioned for the respective task. Using BEUMER calculation programs, a team of experts calculates the existing motion resistances and the related static and dynamic tractive forces of the belt of the system. These on the other hand determine both the drive power to be installed and the belt strength, and are also considered in the dimensioning of the horizontal curves.
“The energy consumption of long, horizontal belt conveyors is determined by the main resistance in the upper and return strand in stationary operating conditions,” describes Rewer. The energy consumption consists of the running resistance of the idlers, the indentation rolling resistance and the flexing resistance of both the conveyed material and the belt when running over the idlers. The forces required for overcoming these resistances depend on various operational and design parameters. They can be determined with the so-called single resistance method. If components with low running resistances are considered, such as belts with reduced indentation rolling resistance or running-optimised idlers, the calculations of the systems nowadays show considerably lower tractive forces of the belt than a few years ago. This not only results in lower energy costs. Since the tractive forces of the belt are at a lower level, also the radii of the horizontal curves can be selected to be correspondingly smaller, because these forces are decisive for the design of these curves. Accordingly, the routing of overland conveyors can now be realised in a more flexible way and with smaller radii.
“In order to plan the conveyor for the individual application, we reach into our virtual tool box,” Rewer explains. “This way we can arrange the whole routing of the system and then discuss it with the customer as a 3D plan”. BOLT, the BEUMER Overland Layouting Tool developed specifically for this purpose, generates almost automatically a digital 3D model of the conveyor in the virtual landscape during the project planning. The required topography data are available in the public domain or are provided by the customer. Often drones are used. The aerial photographs include topographical information, which is then processed into digital terrain models.
Fig. 2. 3D model of terrain and conveyor: Earthworks (cut & fill) or steelwork structures can be quickly and precisely balanced against each other in terms of drawings and calculations. // Bild 2. 3D-Modell von Gelände und Förderer: Erdarbeiten (Cut & Fill) oder Stahlbaustrukturen lassen sich schnell und präzise zeichnerisch und rechnerisch gegeneinander abwägen. Photo/Foto: BEUMER
In the simulation environment, the experts can adapt the conveyor to the route. The almost real illustration of the conveyor in the landscape also serves to recognise possible obstacles and to consider them accordingly in the project planning. Furthermore, the technicians are able to add the earthworks (cut & fill) and the steelwork structures in simple and precise way and evaluate them (Figure 2). BOLT not only ensures a very fast first project planning of the route. Especially modifications or adaptations during the project can be taken into account within short time. Project-critical data can be supplied at short term by BOLT. It includes the definition of the entire equipments on the route as well as the coordinates for foundation and earthworks. Since these data are generated automatically and updated by BOLT in case of modifications, possible required adaptations of the route are not further time-critical. All necessary data can be generated immediately after rescheduling.
“With this procedure we are able to considerably accelerate the project planning,” promises Dorra. “We have the possibility to provide the customer in advance with a concrete 3D project planning, which can be easily modified during the project life. This procedure allows us to tighten the time frame for the project”.
Further information: BEUMER Group GmbH & Co. KG www.beumer.com
In addition to the existing office in Somerset, New York, the BEUMER Group, Beckum/Germany, has now opened a new office in Denver, Colorado/USA. This merged the offices in Kansas City, Missouri, and Dallas, Texas. The new location in Denver is strategically located that all customers can be easily reached. Here, projects in the business areas of mining and airport will be mainly managed. The new location offers space for around 35 workplaces. With this location BEUMER plans to expand further.
“From strategically located Denver now we are very happy to offering our airport customers our baggage handling systems. With our comprehensive range of services, we are always there for our customers“, says David Delaney, Vice President and General Manager Airports Division North America at BEUMER. Furthermore, US customers from the mining business area will also benefit from the new company office (Figure 1). “Out of the new office now, we can look after our customers in the various industries even better”, said Daniel Uttelbach, Managing Director and Vice President Conveying & Loading Systems. (BEUMER/Si.)
