Staying Ahead of Environmental Dust Problems
Dust control specialist Donaldson Australasia has worked closely with a longstanding quarry operation to help it to stay ahead of any potential environmental problems as new urban areas encroach.
The Readymix quarry in Albion Park - owned by Cemex Australia Pty Ltd and situated just outside Wollongong in NSW - is mining rock for road base and the objective was to engineer, install and commission a dust handling system to stop any spill-out to the local environment.
There were three main project objectives to be observed; to reduce the emission level of dust (breathing zones), comply with the EPA dust emission level and improve housekeeping.
The solution provided by Donaldson offered the extraction of dust generated from three screens, five conveyor transfer points and various bins.
Dust is captured by means of hoods and then conveyed through a balanced ducted system towards the dust collection plant. Contaminated air passes through the dust collector where the dust is separated from the air stream giving an omission of less than 15mg per cubic metre through an exhaust system.
Dust collected in the dust collector hopper is transferred to the dustbin via a pneumatic conveying system. Due to the abrasive nature of the product, a semi-dense phase system was selected.
In this particular plant, the content of the product going through the system had a silica content which can abrade the steel pipe work. To overcome this problem, Donaldson first tried a concrete support system around each elbow joint, but found that basalt lined elbows coped much better and put this in as a standard along with the general epoxy paint lining through the rest of the system.
The dust collector is a Donaldson, Dalamatic 3/6/15 with horizontal bags. This is a reverse pulse jet-cleaned unit with fabric filters, with a total filter area of 270m².
