Conveyor component specialist Kinder & Co has played a pivotal role in an inaugural ‘Bulk Handling Award’ made recently to Alliance Yallourn (Truenergy / Silcar)

The power station is a 1,480 megawatt power station in the Latrobe Valley in Victoria that produces 23% of Victoria’s electricity. It is owned by Truenergy.

A High Commendation for Best practice in OH&S recognises Alliance Yallourn’s efforts to not only improve its conveyor operations, it also rewards the implementation of OH&S and risk management practices and policies that enhance the safety and health of employees and/or the general public

Kinder & Co’s innovative K-Polymer rollers are replacing the plant’s traditional heavy steel conveyor rollers in the 9km of fuel distribution conveyor systems.

With traditional steel rollers, Alliance Coal Delivery Team found the high potential risk of injury could be accredited to the manual handling of the steel rollers up long steep conveyor galleries. Maintenance teams routinely change out approximately 50 conveyor rollers a month. In fact one of Yallourn’s experienced team members actually suffered a lost time injury whilst conducting routine conveyor maintenance, so the company took positive action immediately.

This injury could be accredited to the weight factor of steel rollers multiplied by the amount of rollers changed out on a typical conveyor maintenance routine. Inclines are steep, conveyor galleries narrow, some have stair access points, so lifting techniques and trolleys proved inadequate.

For Yallourn’s application, the weight reduction was generally 6kg less per roller (a traditional steel roller used by us weighs 12.7kg). Team members handling and installing them were very impressed by the light weight benefit (50% lighter than steel rollers traditionally used).

What has been discernibly noticeable is the significant noise reduction in the trial area within the conveyor gallery.

Another noticeable safety and asset protection aspect gained was fire protection. Traditional steel rollers have been known to cause fires when the bearings fail and the collapsed rotating outer steel shell of the roller impacts on the roller frame, causing sparks and ignition with product residue (coal dust). If the bearings were to fail on a polymer roller, the impact would be insignificant as the outer polymer shell has different characteristics than steel.

Durability was tested over a year, and there were no failures. The durability of the glass filled polymer casing has proven itself over time and not deteriorated in any way at all.

Kinder K-Polymer rollers are also fully recyclable and show power efficiencies during operation that are far superior to metal roller alternatives.

Now more than three years down the track, Alliance Yallourn has not had a single manual handling incident or roller failure with more than 1500 Kinder K-Polymer rollers installed to date .

The plant is now at trial stages with the application of Kinder K-Polymer 1800mm wide return rollers which weigh only 25kg as opposed to 85kg for traditional return rollers.

Noise reduction benefits not only both maintenance and operations personnel who work in and around the vicinity of conveyor galleries, but also contributes to keeping noise levels down to the surrounding public.

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