Issue link: https://www.e-digitaleditions.com/i/1292632
30 / October 2020 powderbulk.com Case history | Automated dust collector monitoring PBE Digital monitoring system helps a mineral company cut back on maintenance time and costs. A large industrial miner- als company with a lime processing plant in the mid-Atlantic region of the US han- dles chemicals — beginning with loaded haulage from inside a mine all the way through to the final processing of the material, which is then sized, screened, and put into trucks. "We produce chemical-grade lime for multiple industrial pro- cesses, and we're a hybrid mining and chemical company," says Jona- than Proudley, maintenance man- ager. "Some of our products are fairly large lumps and don't act like a powder, but some portions are absolutely powder." The plant has 29 dust collectors with a capacity of 20,000 cfm or less for nuisance dust collection. The plant also has six larger production baghouse collectors with capacities between 120,000 and 150,000 cfm connected to kilns. Wasted maintenance hours With so many dust collectors to monitor throughout the plant, the company was required to regularly send workers to inspect the equip- ment for damage to the bag filters. Furthermore, the company has a Title V permit, which requires that strict air emission standards be met. "Bag damage and emissions are always the thing we're trying to prevent," Proudley says. "But it's also important to efficiently use labor hours with maintenance staff because we were doing preventive maintenance work that wasn't iden- tifying the source of problems." In addition to maintenance hours, there's also a safety issue since the material has a pH of 12, which means it's basic and poses a poten- tial risk to employees. This makes it important to limit how often people need to get inside these collectors for inspection and maintenance. "The less I have to send people inside of the collector looking at bags, trying to dye-check bags, and see if we can find a leak, the better," Proudley says. "If I can instead use a particulate monitor connected with a differential pressure meter to maintain good operating parame- ters, it's less wasted time that we can direct to other places in the facility." To find a long-term solution to monitoring the dust collectors, the company turned to Donaldson, a filtration and dust collection equip- ment manufacturer and supplier based in Minneapolis, MN. The A lime processing plant has more than 30 dust collectors across a large facility. The company decided to trial a digital monitoring system to cut down on maintenance costs.