National Oats: This Isn’t Your Father’s Pneumatic Conveyance System!

December 17, 2012 by Miaja Cornelius

If an elephant truly can be eaten “one bite at a time,” then it stands to reason that something as light and fluffy as a dried oat can — eventually — blast a hole through a cast-iron pipe elbow.

As long as that elbow isn’t a HammerTek Smart Elbow deflection elbow.

Prior to 1985, National Oats of Cedar Rapids, IA, had been conveying oats for its oat cereal and oat flour from its outdoor storage tanks to its indoor blending vessels the old-fashioned way: using an 8-inch pipeline with ceramic sweep elbows everywhere that line turned.

That method required five maintenance calls per year for elbow repair and replacement, as the oats — traveling at 90,000 pounds per hour through the pipeline — ate away at the elbows from the inside out.

In 1985, HammerTek offered National Oats three Smart Elbow units with a money-back guarantee. National, which had been seeking a solution to the maintenance problem for years, agreed to the offer. Today, the formerly high cost of elbow maintenance and replacement has been eliminated, and the company has installed additional Smart Elbow models on its lines.

The secret to the Smart Elbow deflection elbow is its patented Vortex Chamber, a nearly spherical chamber located at the back of the bend where traditional elbows fail. The chamber’s patented shape allows the formation of a slowly rotating ball of material which, instead of creating eddies or other pockets of turbulence, redirects and smooths the flow of material into its new direction. This eliminates elbow wear, helps save energy in pumping costs, and increases product quantity and quality by improving material delivery rate and flow.

Bob Williams, National Oats’ chief project engineer, gives the Smart Elbow deflection elbow three C’s and a D.

“Cost-effective, Compact, Convenient and Durable,” he said.

Replacing three ceramic sweep elbows with Smart Elbow units has resulted in an 11 percent increase in conveying rate — from 90,000 to 100,000 pounds per hour. The improved flow provided by the Smart Elbow deflection elbow has resulted in more even discharge as the storage tanks empty. Last but not least, Williams estimates that the Smart Elbows have reduced the conveying system’s electric bill by $800 to $1,200 per year.

To read the full case study, go to: http://www.hammertek.com/case-study-grain-national.asp For more information on the HammerTek Smart Elbow deflection elbow, please visit www.hammertek.com.