This article will take an in-depth look at bulk bag handling equipment.
The article will bring more detail on topics such as:
This chapter will discuss bulk bag handling equipment.
Processing equipment for holding and moving bulk bags is known as bulk bag equipment. This bulk bag equipment is typically used at the front end of the production process to hand off product to the pneumatic conveyors to be packaged and palletized for shipping.
Bulk bags are commercially produced fabric sacks for storing and moving dry, flowable commodities. Examples include sand, grain, fertilizer, and plastic granules. Numerous applications, including some pneumatic conveying operations, heavily rely on bulk bag handling.
Bulk bag equipment is used in a variety of establishments, such as greenhouses, industrial manufacturing facilities, commercial agriculture facilities, commercial food distribution facilities, pharmaceutical production centers, and more.
The purpose and location of material handling equipment in the supply chain determines the categories into which it is divided. Transportation, placing, load formation, and retrieval are among the various tasks. Various highly constructed and well-designed software systems are used as material handling instruments in modern technological material handling.
In material handling, "transportation" refers to a broad category of instruments and apparatuses used to move items, supplies, and materials effectively. Hoists, cranes, and conveyors that move goods inside a facility between processing applications, production zones, and packing or assembly facilities are a part of this group.
Forklifts, dollies, hand trucks, and pallet jacks, which have closer contact with material transportation, also assist in these procedures. The speed that raw materials are fed into the processing location significantly impacts the quality of an assembly or manufacturing process.
The product manufactured and the location to which the necessary components must be transported dictates the method employed. The use of technical tools in modern production includes automated robotic processes and numerous feeder types designed to precisely place components for insertion into the product.
The shipping and receiving department, where products are received and prepared for shipping, is typically what comes to mind when people define or think of material handling. One of the more important sections of material handling, this component uses several tools, machinery, and machines to streamline and simplify different parts of the process.
Side-loaders, pallet trucks, walkie stackers, order pickers, locators, and platform vehicles like dollies or hand trucks are all essential for shipping and handling. Truck loading and unloading are done with the help of mobile roller conveyors, which can be moved around and placed in various locations.
The process of moving bulk materials that need equipment to transport chips, cereals, gravel, sand, and other kinds of granular or powdered materials is known as specialist material handling.
Each type of bulk material handling equipment, such as stackers, hoppers, grain and bucket elevators, belt and screw conveyors, and rotary vehicle dumpers, is specifically made to handle a particular material.
Every manufacturing, industrial, and commercial organization has a technique for keeping track of what is available and what is needed while storing its raw materials. Warehousing, a crucial component of storage, is a carefully managed and controlled component of a business's assets.
A clear and organized method is included in warehousing for the placement and retrieval of materials. Materials are arranged in cabinets, shelves, and bins with labels and clearly defined categorizations as part of the placing process. The most challenging of the several material handling tasks is warehousing, which calls for careful planning and the use of appropriate tools for storing goods.
Retrieval of the stored objects using a forklift, pallet jack, dolly, or hand cart is simple to accomplish if all other requirements for warehousing are met. Sophisticated computer software is used in contemporary warehousing techniques to find and arrange goods for distribution.
Although gathering, storing, and retrieving items may seem like a straightforward procedure, material handling is a complex, organized, and automated process that uses specialized equipment to guarantee the seamless and error-free movement of a company's assets.
Bulk bag fillers, bulk bag unloaders, and bulk bag conditioners are a few of the several types of bulk bag machinery. These will be discussed below:
Alternatively referred to as bulk bag dischargers, bulk bag unloaders efficiently discharge powders or other dry bulk materials from bags that were employed to store or facilitate the transportation of otherwise challenging-to-handle commodities. A mechanism known as a bulk bag unloader is designed to efficiently and safely unload large or jumbo bags.
The bulk bag unloading system is also the initial point of contact between the staff and the ingredients. Due to this, bulk material handling safety begins with the bulk bag unloader in operation. When bags are removed from storage, bulk bag unloaders are especially helpful because the items may have become tightly packed over time, making them much more challenging to unload manually.
Due to their enclosed, tubular construction, bulk bag unloaders provide dust-free material handling and are frequently used for unloading products, including polymers, cement, soda ash, magnesium oxide, powders, grains, and hydrated lime. Bulk bag unloaders are beneficial for a variety of materials, but they may also be used with a variety of bag sizes and types, including lined, unlined, polypropylene, mesh, gusseted, and perforated bags.
Flexible containers can occasionally also be loaded onto bulk bag unloaders. Bulk bag unloaders are frequently used in the construction, commercial, foundry, mining, and pharmaceutical sectors as a safe and affordable method of unloading bulk bags.
Depending on the needs of the application, several accessories can be added to bulk bag unloaders, which are normally of a very simple structure. A frame, a hopper, bag support, often suspension loops connecting to the bags, and an outlet chute make up the majority of bulk bag unloaders. Although there are numerous frame designs for bulk bag unloaders, the most prevalent are forklift and chain hoist styles.
Bulk bag unloaders in the forklift design contain pockets that make it simple for a forklift to put bulk bags into the bulk bag unloader. Because it does not require an upper framework to lift or place the bags, this form of bulk bag unloader is often shorter than a chain hoist-style bulk bag unloader. By incorporating a pneumatic or electrically powered hoist that enables an operator to lift, position, and support the bag for loading, a chain hoist-style bulk bag unloader makes it possible to load the bags without using a forklift.
Crane-style bulk bag unloaders are a less popular option. Much like a forklift would be used to load bulk bags, a crane-style bulk bag unloader operates similarly. The material can be efficiently discharged for additional processing or longer-term storage with all designs of bulk bag unloaders. Large bags of bulk material can be swiftly and effectively unloaded with bulk bag unloaders, which have been around for a while. These goods are used in numerous industries, including mining, agriculture, and food production.
Several bulk bag unloader businesses have developed a new design for bag unloading today, primarily for the packaging and processing sectors of the food and pharmaceutical industries. These unloaders meet most national and international hygiene standards.
This indicates that offloading large items is now more hygienic and secure than before. Integrated automation, which maximizes uptime availability in the food and pharmaceutical processing and packaging centers, is used to achieve this. These devices use a touch screen computer for system-wide processing control, communication, reporting, sensing, and monitoring. Instant connections with UL panels are possible because of high-speed Ethernet connections. Doing this improves the unloader's efficiency, and costly errors are avoided.
The revolutionary design and sophisticated computers work together to allow factories to discharge their bags in a clean environment without the threat of contamination. This streamlines the manufacturing process and can help factory owners save time and money. A food production facility can expedite its manufacturing process and considerably reduce expenses by using this innovative style of bag unloader. Most food and pharmaceutical industries simply cannot afford to ignore this benefit.
A rail car unloading system typically uses a transfer system to unload and convey material to their use points. The system uses a vacuum filter with a vacuum blower. Thus, a rotary valve discharges product to the pressure system from the vacuum filter. The rail cars can have a holding capacity of 3,500 to 5,500 cubic feet in volume. They can typically transport bulk material up to 120 tons at a time.
Depending on the rail car type opted for, the unloading system must be cost-effective and efficient to balance out the high operating costs of these rail cars. The high operating costs are due to the very large blower packages used when pneumatically unloading. This high cost would also include ongoing maintenance.
Bulk bag conditioners are employed to disperse any bulk substance that has grown too compact during transportation, essentially by squeezing the substance. Because they are simple to operate, efficient, and energy-efficient, these conditioners are widely used. Bulk bag manufacturers can alter their products to integrate well with a pneumatic conveying system. In addition to other things, they can change the weight the systems can support and lift, the heights they can lift, and the quantity of material they can load and unload. The bulk bag unloading frames with integrated hydraulic bulk bag conditioners are also available, as well as standalone devices.
Both arrangements use two hydraulic rams with end plates that have been precisely shaped to press opposite sides of the bulk bags. They enable bulk bag unloaders to discharge the material through bag spouts by loosening bulk solid materials that have hardened during storage and transportation. These conditioners are advised for bulk bags containing heat-sensitive products, certain kinds of spice blends, hygroscopic chemicals, and other substances that are likely to solidify to the point where pneumatically-actuated flow promotion accessories built into bulk bag dischargers become inefficient or completely useless.
To provide the continuous discharge from the bulk bag to integrated downstream equipment, bulk bag conditioners are designed to automatically reduce rock-hard material in the bulk bag to the ideal size. They also help to avoid safety difficulties brought on by manual bag conditioning attempts and solve the material-supply dependability issues that mechanical systems utilized improperly frequently produce. Some bulk bag conditioner systems provide better downstream efficiency and production yield through upstream operational performance.
The advantages of a good material supply extend to the finished product, but consistent material supply begins upstream. Bulk bag conditioners are created to ensure that material is efficiently delivered to downstream operations in the proper condition.
Engineered-to-application bulk bag conditioners offer the required design elements in terms of building materials, ram design and operation, operator safety, and process automation and integration when processing or packaging applications need specific functionalities .Bulk bag conditioning systems offer efficiency and dependability improvements throughout the process thanks to their performance-proven design foundation.
Agglomerated bagged material cannot jeopardize the steady, dependable flow of product to downstream process activities, regardless of when or how solidified material is received in bulk bags. Bulk bag conditioning systems are built specifically for each application to enhance downstream infeed accuracy and production yield while also enhancing upstream safety and efficiency.
The heights of the bulk bags vary, as do the bag conditioning cycles and bag conditioning sequences. On some bulk bag conditioners, a feature called vertical-travel ram placement places the rams exactly where they are needed most—at a certain height. Issues with turntables and scissor-lift decks are eliminated by the vertical-travel ram design.
The fixed-height ram positioning function offers full conditioning while shortening bag conditioning cycle times for applications where bulk bag heights are more consistent or material qualities of the bagged product are more regular. They prevent the safety hazards associated with manual bag conditioning techniques and boost the consistency of the material supply downstream.
Bulk bag conditioner turntables are created and engineered to leverage the force effect of the ram compression action, allowing them to endure more than simply the weight of the bulk bag as its fundamental load.
The force capacity of bulk bag conditioner turntables distributes the conditioning force back into the bulk bag, as opposed to the turntable dissipating the force effect of the compression, as is typical with scissor lift turntable designs. Each compression cycle's speed and impact are enhanced by the larger force capacity.
Hydraulically powered deblocking rams can fracture even the most heavily agglomerated material, with over 29,000 pounds of compressive force for hardened, rock-like material. To allow for discharge through the bulk bag spout, the broken material is condensed into tiny clumps.
Pyramidal ribs on the face of each deblocking ram concentrate the force of the deblocking at the points where the ram makes contact with the bulk bag. The deblocking ram faces are fabricated from 304 stainless steel and carbon steel.
Hydraulically operated conditioning rams avoid bridging and maintain continuous material flow through the bulk bag spout for material that is not free flowing or agglomerated. The domed face of the conditioning rams distributes pressure away from the bulk bag's key contact points by producing a compression force of over 29,000 pounds. Both stainless steel and carbon steel were used in the building of the deblocking ram faces.
The bulk bag loading side of the system is secured by a light curtain with an electrical lock. A flashing amber stack light will notify the operator if the light curtain beam is crossed, which disables system operation. The safety caging of the bulk bag conditioner is intended to be used in conjunction with light curtains.
The safety cage system shields the bulk bag conditioner on up to four sides. An electronically interlocked access point controls infrastructure serves as the foundation for the application-specific engineering and installation of safety caging. Safety caging construction regulations may call for using carbon steel or stainless steel, polycarbonate view windows, and controls that integrate with interlocking doors or light curtains.
This will offer an application-specific design that incorporates the bulk bag conditioning function into a bulk bag discharger architecture for bulk bag conditioning applications where process requirements demand inline conditioning. The 6-inch by 4-inch (15 by 10 cm) tubing used to build the bulk bag discharger's framework features reinforced bracing to withstand the hydraulic force generated by the ram compression operation.
These devices are made to weigh and fill bulk bags. Manufacturers can add vibratory bases to filling systems to promote material compaction. To improve flow, they can also set up conveyors, pallet dispensers, and automatic bag removers.
Bulk bag fillers for companies like Flexicon, often referred to as FIBC, Big Bag, and Jumbo Bag Fillers, come in various configurations to satisfy the price point and capacity demands of each customer's application. Each of these setups offers the best performance within particular capacity ranges at the lowest possible cost. They are intended for medium to high capacity applications, placing the fill head close to the operator at floor level for quicker, safer, and simpler bag hookups.
Each of these designs fulfills a particular range of bulk bag filling applications and may be customized with performance upgrades to precisely meet any needs at the lowest possible cost. Successful bulk bag filling can be found, from basic, low-cost fillers to automated, high-capacity systems.
Bulk bag fillers are available in two configurations for quick, precise, and stable weigh-filling of small to large volumes of free- and non-free-flowing bulk materials. The first configuration features load cells that monitor the weight gain of the bulk bag filler. The second configuration features weight hoppers suspended above the bag filler that enable simultaneous hopper recharging and bulk bag replacement to achieve high filling rates.
The bulk bag filler system models include:
The characteristics of HD models include:
The characteristics of NT series bulk bag fillers include:
Regardless of the properties of the process material, bulk bag filler systems are designed for high-performance operation in bulk material processing and packaging applications where repeatable and consistent duty cycles, rates, precision, and equipment effectiveness are essential. Systems for filling bulk bags run on a chassis with a structural architecture tailored to the procedure. Integrating the controls and automation architecture throughout the chassis creates a unified construction and controls infrastructure. The operator's experience with the system is improved because of the integrated construction and controls infrastructure, which also offers more thorough and useful performance data and lowers the total cost of ownership.
Bulk bag filling systems' construction materials and design requirements allow bulk material processing operations to run production at intended rates without worrying about unscheduled downtime, inaccurate filling, or additional labor costs that come with underperforming big bag filling systems. The bulk bag filler systems are designed and built to function very well in terms of dependability and throughput, even in the hardest processing and packaging plant settings.
When filling bulk bags, drums, cartons, totes, or other bulk containers, bulk material filling systems enable processing and packaging operations handling dry bulk materials to run at, or beyond, planned uptime, throughput, and quality standards. Bulk filling systems are made with a performance-proven structure to withstand harsh process conditions and handle extended duty cycles. Additionally, even when connected to legacy systems, integrated automation integrates control capabilities deeper into equipment operations to give more thorough data reporting. Process-integrated dry bulk filling systems offer a whole process advantage by producing precisely filled, stable bags and containers, eliminating material loss, and enhancing worker safety and productivity.
Bulk packing operations benefit from the performance and precision of bulk bag fillers. Because of their robust design and automation, bulk bag fillers assure bulk material processors that their end-of-line bulk bag filling is an integrated continuation of their upstream bulk material processing while also delivering dependable and repeatable bag-full weights. With the help of bulk container filling systems, bulk packaging and processing operations may operate at their intended rates without having to worry about ongoing material waste, rework, or additional labor costs that come with poorly functioning container loading equipment.
While maintaining accurate fill volume and weight accuracy, the single-station design fills a variety of container types, including totes, cartons, and even bulk bags, through the same fill station. The accuracy of drum filling systems is certified, continuous, and precise, going beyond the level of a simple load cell. To guarantee operations, supervision, and management staff that containers are stable and safe, material loss is eliminated, and line operations are optimized, the high-performance materials of construction and control automation function as an integrated systems infrastructure.
Drums, boxes, and other containers of common sizes used for bulk solid material storage and transportation can be accommodated by container dumpers and open-chute container dumpers (also known as container tippers).
All are available in mild steel with sturdy industrial finishes, with surfaces that can be touched by stainless materials, or in all-stainless variants that have been treated to meet food, dairy, pharmaceutical, or industrial standards. Furthermore, all are available with mechanical or pneumatic conveyors, rotary airlock valves, or flanged outlets to feed any operation.
This equipment serves to open and unload small volume bags effectively and safely. There are several types of bulk materials that can be handled, including free-flowing granules and fine, sticky powders. Bag dump stations have been designed in a way that they meet a lot of application requirements. The type of sack size, bulk material, downstream equipment, discharged medium, discharge speed, environmental aspects, ergonomics, and safety are very important factors that affect the final design of bag dump units.
Bag dump systems have a modular design that makes them easily configured for every application requirement. There are also standard models consisting of simple frames and hoppers. Having a complete solution in the single main frame is a high-level model. A single unit can handle bag opening, discharge, storage of products, and collection of dust, dosing, and conveying. Bag dump stations are also called sack opening stations, bag emptiers, sack emptiers, bag tip stations, or sack tipping stations.
This chapter will discuss the applications and benefits of bulk bag handling equipment.
Silo filling, mixer loading, production line feeding, bulk truck loading, packaging systems, weighing, batching, and dosing systems are a few examples of big bag unloading applications. Numerous applications, including some pneumatic conveying operations, heavily rely on bulk bag handling.
Bulk bag equipment is used in a variety of establishments, such as greenhouses, industrial manufacturing facilities, commercial agriculture facilities, commercial food distribution facilities, pharmaceutical production centers, and more.
The advantages of bulk bag handling equipment include:
Less labor is required to do this activity because bulk bag handling equipment can collect and distribute material into processing lines, which is a big advantage for facilities with limited worker resources.
Bulk bag handling equipment provides a dust-free discharge technique that seals in powder ingredients, reducing product loss during dispensing and improving worker safety and comfort.
Bulk bag handling equipment is also intended to enhance hygiene. For instance, the bulk bag unloaders from Powder Process-Solutions have a special spout design that stops extraneous materials from entering the product stream. The product only comes into contact with the inside of the bag liner, providing greater cleanliness and product protection.
Operators may effortlessly load, tie, untie, and remove bags without having to reach into awkward or hard-to-reach spaces since bulk bag unloaders handle the heavy lifting. Unloaders also include user-friendly control screens that are simple to understand and can be rapidly educated on by the operator.
Bulk bag handling equipment has a modular design that makes it simple to customize to unique requirements.
The stainless steel and carbon steel designs of bulk bag unloaders offer a robust, long-lasting solution for discharging bulk items.
The other general advantages include:
Processing equipment for holding and moving bulk bags is known as bulk bag equipment. Numerous applications, including some pneumatic conveying operations, heavily rely on bulk bag handling. Bulk bag equipment is used in a variety of establishments, such as greenhouses, industrial manufacturing facilities, commercial agriculture facilities, commercial food distribution facilities, pharmaceutical production centers, and more. Bulk bag fillers, bulk bag unloaders, and bulk bag conditioners are a few of the several types of bulk bag machinery. It is critical to make the right choice for bulk bag handling depending on the characteristics, application, and benefits of each type of equipment.
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