Smart Elbow® deflection elbow trims utility costs

February 5, 2015 by Miaja Cornelius

A maker of oat cereal and oat flour, National Oats (a subsidiary of Curtice Burns, Inc.) uses a pneumatic conveyance system to move raw oats from their outdoor storage tanks to blending vessels housed inside the plant at a rate of 90,000 lbs/hour through an 8” pipeline. The volume of material moving through the system was taking its toll on the wear-back ceramic sweep elbows.

These sweep elbows required periodic repair and replacement — which meant stopping the line and patching worn areas of the sweeps with welded-on steel plate. When patching no longer became effective (at approximately two years after initial installation) the entire elbow and adjoining sections had to completely replaced. Maintenance teams were being called five times per year, just for elbow repair and replacement.

Chief project engineer Bob Williams believed this routine of repair and replacement (and the associated equipment cost and labor) was unavoidable.

That all changed when National Oats was introduced to the Smart Elbow deflection elbow by Hammertek.

Rather than relying on deflection to change the direction of material, which causes friction- and impact- related wear, the Smart Elbow design creates a slowly rotating ball of material in its patented Vortex Chamber. Since installing its first three cast iron Smart Elbow models, National Oats has eliminated the high cost of elbow maintenance and replacement, freeing up budget dollars to install additional Smart Elbow products on its lines.

The company also saw an 11-percent increase in conveying rate, from 90,000 to 100,000 lbs/hr after installing Smart Elbow deflection elbows. Oats flowed more easily and efficiently through the system with less degradation, thanks to the intelligent design of the Smart Elbow model. The more efficient movement of material reduced electricity costs by more than $800 per year for the 75 hp vacuum pump driving the system; in short, the pump didn’t need to work as hard to move the oats into the blending vessels.

To find out how HammerTek Smart Elbow deflection elbows can save your company expensive repairs and downtime while increasing efficiency and productivity, visit us at HammerTek.com.