Smart Elbow® deflection elbow offers solution to wood particle wear

At Northwood Pulp and Timber Ltd, in Prince George, British Columbia, wear-back sweep elbows were wearing out at an alarming rate (approximately every three months), thanks in part to the “hog fuel” mixture of bark and sawdust pneumatically conveyed through the plant’s system.

Mario Rezendes, maintenance supervisor, simply wasn’t satisfied with the performance of the hog fuel pneumatic conveying line. Elbow failures were happening too frequently, causing line shutdowns, costly repairs and cleanups. After researching various alternatives to the wear-back elbows Northwood was using, he chose the Smart Elbow deflection elbow by Hammertek.

Traditional elbows rely on impact to change the direction of conveyed material, but friction accelerates wear of the interior walls, a reality with which Rezendes and his team were all too familiar.

The Smart Elbow deflection elbow is designed to change particle direction though deflection instead of impact, virtually eliminating elbow wear. As a result, conveyed material moves more smoothly through the system with minimal contact of the elbow walls.

At first, a single Smart Elbow model was installed at one location in the line’s three-elbow system.

The results were remarkable.

Rezendes’ original Smart Elbow deflection elbow lasted four years, outlasting the remaining wear-back sweep elbows 16:1. Based on this performance benchmark, he replaced the other elbows in the line with Smart Elbow models, a modification so successful the plant is now specifying the installation of 10-inch Smart Elbowmodels in its chip handling system to further improve efficiency and reduce maintenance costs.

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