AN INNOVATIVE MULTI-PURPOSE AUTOMATED BAG HANDLING

Giancarlo Baistrocchi FLSmidth Ventomatic Spa - Senior Area Sales Manager The Indian Cement Industry, in order to increase the current efficiency and safety working conditions of the existing installations and to provide state of the art solutions for the new installations, needs a significant improvement in terms of automation and mechanization of the packing, loading and dispatch technology. FLSmidth Ventomatic has a complete range of product and solutions for supporting the Customers, providing equipment, expertise, technical support and proper technical assistance by an extremely qualified technical staff. Established in 1957, FLSmidth Ventomatic Spa is one of the worlds leading suppliers of complete plants and single machinery for high accuracy and high capacity packaging and dispatching of powder and granulated products such as cement, dry mortar, lime, gypsum, tile adhesive, sand, carbonates, talcum and fertilizers. In July 2009, FLSmidth Group (for strategic expansion of FLSmidth Ventomatic SpA) acquired the very well known Indian company EEL India Pvt. Limited, today FLSmidth Ventomatic India. The Direction and Engineering offices are based in Gurgaon, in Bawal the new manufacturing and assembling workshop a property area ( fenced)of 129.000 sqm. out of which 67.000 sqm covered area ( no. 3 workshops and facilities). Cement dispatch as key factor In a modern Cement factory, the efficiency of a cement dispatch unit is a key factor. The term EFFICIENCY is an aggregation of several factors such as : Degree of automation and mechanization of the department, leading to a significant reduction of man power and the increasing of safety working conditions ; Increasing and optimization of each individual equipment efficiency and performance in terms of actual output, better weigh accuracy, reduced down time for maintenance and amount of spare parts required for maintenance; Reduction of dust emission and optimization of the dispatch consumables with particular reference to the bags characteristics; Ability to satisfy the market requirements, in terms of sufficient amount of bags to be delivered/loaded on trucks and/or rail wagons; Definition of the most rational packing/dispatch and loading plant configuration and layout in terms of characteristics, number and size of equipment, flexibility and logistic. The characteristics of carriers available (in India. For example trucks have different shape and dimension, rail wagon dimension and related access doors are fixed and limited) moreover the limits imposed by the Authorities (with particular reference to rail transportation) cant be neglected.

In the below image Fig-1 there is an overall view of a possible concept of a complete, modern and rational bag dispatch unit

Fig-1: Cement bag dispatch In order to reach the above mentioned goal there are some pre-conditions to be provided, one of the most important is the optimization of the cement bag characteristics . Currently , in India, the most diffused and in use cement bag is the traditional HDPE non laminated stitched bag because two main reasons: A very well established industry for the production of this type of bags which is able to satisfy the market requirements in terms of quantity and lead time; A competitive price (also considering the huge amount of bags supplied), compared to other type of bags such as paper of PP laminated glued valve , but in this moment it is difficult to understand the realistic gap due to the low request of paper or PP laminated bags versus the HDPE non laminated bags

The HDPE non laminated stitched bag, in terms of manufacturing sequence, needs a relevant implication of manual operations during the manufacturing process, consequently the manufacturing accuracy (mainly in terms of dimension tolerances) is not stable and not actually controlled. In case of equipment with high degree of automation the above mentioned factor lead to a very sensitive impact on the performance mainly in terms of efficiency . The challenge is to find the right compromise and balance between the basic pre-conditions to be provided for a good performance of complete automatic installation and the implementation of the bag quality /characteristics with a sustainable price. When the possible implementation of the bag quality is under Customer evaluation, because requested from the equipment supplier, it is important to make a consideration, quite often underestimated. With the utilization of a bag with better manufacturing characteristics (either paper or laminated type ), there is a very significant reduction of dust emission during the filling process and the handling of full bags, with the following advantages:

Better weigh accuracy of each individual bag (no cement delivered for free, no illegal underweight bags ); Less dust in the environment and consequently safer and healthier working conditions; Less waste of cement and pollution; Less costs for periodic cleaning of equipment and working area ; Less wearing of equipment due to the abrasiveness of the cement dust and consequently less maintenance costs; Better presentation of the product (bag) when introduced into the market

From a realistic calculation currently during filling handling- loading phases, each bag loses an amount of cement between 1 and 2 Kilos. A mid size cement factory easily delivers from 15 to 20 million bags per year which means from 30.000 to 40.000 tons of cement wasted. In conclusion it must be kept in due consideration that using HDPE non laminated stitched bags, the operative limit of the bag applicator is limited to max 2400 bph while with bags of different level (paper or PP laminated glued valve) the limit is increased to over 5000 bph. The advantage is the possibility to install very high capacity line (i.e. up to 3000 bph with an automatic truck loading lines and over 4000 bph with a palletizing lines) in other words a packing line with 12/16 spouts or more can be provided with single discharge line with all related positive implications (less space, less equipment, less operators, less maintenance etc. ).