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Bucket Elevator Engineering & Design Guidance

Elevator upgrade at Sun-Rice Australia. Provided engineering, design guidance and component supply with changing old-style fabricated elevator buckets to modern polymer SPS buckets. Elimination of backlegging and chute wear.

Sun-Rice
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Sun-Rice
Challenge

Customer had undertaken a “continuous improvement” programme of upgrading older types of steel elevator buckets for modern efficient types of polymer elevator buckets. The older style fabricated steel buckets were of a similar geometry to CC type buckets. So, trials commenced utilizing several types of CC poly buckets, all of which proved to be inefficient and backlegged rice so significantly throughput was decreased by 40TPH and wear damage to the casings had occurred
through the re-circulation of materials. 

4B was contacted and asked to consult and were engaged to provide a solution, which included providing suitable system belt speeds, adjustments to outlet chutes and selecting a suitable polymer style bucket that would not compromise the capacity of the system and operations.

Solution

A complete and thorough evaluation was undertaken of belt and pulley speeds, discharge efficiencies and actual volumetric filling factors of individual buckets. This was then assessed against the existing discharge chute design, which favoured the older style steel fabricated buckets. In particular the actual centripetal acceleration that was expected to occur with the modern polymer buckets was calculated and then cross referenced with the vertical and horizontal distances available within the existing discharge chute. 

The combined results provided 4B Engineers with the exact information required for selecting a suitable bucket, adjusting the angle of the outlet chute, applying a belt speed reduction. Which increased individual volumetric filling, and reduced backlegging.

Tulokset

The versatile SPS bucket provided the best results due to wide range of speeds that it can be utilized in on most elevator applications. In this instance the elevator had been designed around an old bucket that was now considered inefficient in performance and costly to manufacture.

The 4B solution was able to deliver the benefits the customer was looking to achieve with their “continuous improvement” programme. The elimination of the backlegging, and chute wear whilst maintaining origin design capacity.

elevator discharge chute BEFORE modifications
elevator discharge chute AFTER modifications
Old Style Fabricated Steel Elevator Bucket
Old Style Fabricated Steel Bucket & CC type elevator bucket
SPS plastic elevator buckets installed on elevator
Sun-Rice
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Sun-Rice
Recent Case Studies
rice mill

Chain conveyor problems solved in major US rice mill. Replaced existing steel-bushed chain and welded flights with 4B Bolt 'N' Go chain and bolt-on paddles - enabling fast repairs and less maintenance. Reduced conveyor downtime. Hot work permits no longer required for chain repairs.

grain handling facility

Ray-Carroll County Grain Growers needed to increase receiving capacity without shutting down operations. 4B offered a solution using JCC-S low profile elevator buckets allowing closer installation and the addition of 224 buckets per leg. - A 75% capacity increase!

malting facility

A malting facility repurposed a grain elevator to transport "green malt" and found that the elevator was not functioning properly. 4B reduced the elevator pulley size and RPM to give the correct discharge, and modified the outlet. Elevator running smoother with less loading on the motor.

4B team

Subic Bay Freeport Grain Terminal. Changeover of 4B chain and 4B nylon flights to replace competitor's inferior plastic flights and chain. Resolved problems with bending flights, wear issues and failures. Maintenance has been made a lot easier and productivity increased.

Sunrice bucket elevator