Health & Safety including Dust Control
Opportunity not to waste
Gotland’s BagVAC helps Imerys’ St Austell operation recycle 60 tonnes of kaolin a year
Imerys’ St Austell operation is using a Gotland BagVAC to both improve its general housekeeping and to recycle over a tonne of kaolin brick fragments a week, making the plant cleaner and more profitable to operate.
Imerys operates 115 mining sites and 29 different minerals or mineral groups, and in 10 years Imerys has become the world leader in industrial minerals. One of its largest calcining operations is based at St Austell, where the massive deposits of kaolin are first extracted and then conveyed into the neighbouring calcining plant to be processed and packed for delivery to, in this particular plant’s case, the investment casting, general refractories and kilned products industries.
Recycling opportunity
Brian Griggs-Trevarthen is the operations manager, and is responsible for the main calcining plant, a 140 metre long kiln that runs 24/7 turning kaolin slurry through a drying and extrusion process into kaolin bricks for crushing. The associated crushing plant runs 12 hours a day, 7 days a week, and it’s where there are invariably spillages that need to be cleared up. Brian saw that instead of the waste kaolin fragments being shovelled into a barrow and dumped as waste, the manual handling of that waste kaolin could be transformed into almost effortless recycling and cost reduction by sucking up the fragments and putting them back into the process. Brian found out about the Gotland BagVAC which, with its long hose and nozzle, internal hopper for fully enclosed collection and large bag for gathering all the fragments, seemed just the job, so a demonstration was arranged.
The proof of the pudding
Brian: “We’d long thought this was feasible, but before we could get the potential investment approved for purchasing a suction system, we had to prove it could be done. The BagVAC not only demonstrated that our proposed solution was correct, but it was actually more efficient at waste removal and collection than we’d hoped, due to the significant amount of suction power at the nozzle end for removing both very fine kaolin dust and quite chunky bits of kaolin brick. We proved our point to Imerys management, made our case for investment and have subsequently bought a BagVAC for the plant.” “The BagVAC is used every shift, which in the crushing plant means every day every week. We use it to remove and collect about a tonne per week of kaolin fragments, which adds up to over 60 tonnes a year – which at the current market prices is not just a lot of kaolin, but a lot of value.” “The BagVAC will, as we predicted, soon pay for itself. It’s a business solution that makes great sense, because it not only improves our housekeeping and health and safety standards, but also reduces costs by recycling instead of wasting a valuable resource.”
For more information contact Gotland on tel: 01737 24 66 49 or visit:
www.gotland.co.uk
42 Solids & Bulk Handling • May 2010
www.solidsandbulk.co.uk
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