As time goes by, HammerTek’s patented Smart Elbow deflection elbow is proving that it can move your product through bends in pneumatic conveying lines — no matter the product. In Prince George, British Columbia, Northwood Pulp and Timber Ltd. has applied the Smart Elbow deflection elbow to successfully remedy a problem common to the pulp and paper industry: moving wood chips, bark and sawdust — known in the industry as hog fuel — while eliminating …

Smart Elbow deflection elbows may be known for their ability to handle changes in pipeline direction with much less wear, tear and maintenance than traditional sweep elbows, but many of our customers are reporting additional benefits. Take, for example, National Oats. The Cedar Rapids, IA, plant has been processing oat cereal and flour for decades. Prior to 1985, conveyance of these materials from outdoor storage tanks to indoor blending vessels was handled the traditional way, …

There’s something odd about an industry that’s designed to be good for the environment having environmental concerns of its own. Yet that’s just what was happening at Montgomery County’s North Incinerator plant, which converts household waste to energy in the Dayton, Ohio, area. Try as they did, engineers could not find a way to convey powdered lime — part of the plant’s phase pneumatic conveying system — for any great length of time before a …

A customer of ours — a PVC pipe producer with $40 million in annual sales — uses a pneumatic conveying system to transfer resin and pellets from storage to the pipe extruders. The abrasive nature of their product was causing elbow wear — and serious down time — every couple of months. Another customer producing vinyl windows and extrusions experienced elbow failure &mash; along with expensive down time and EPA fines — every couple of …

When Miller Brewing Company’s Fort Worth, TX facility needed to make a change in its conveying system, HammerTek and its patented Smart Elbow® deflection elbow proved the right recipe for the job. Roy Marin, staff engineer at the facility, needed to replace a worn-out automatic diverter that switched its rail car unload line from one storage silo to another. This diverter had been a source of maintenance and housekeeping problems, and Marin wanted to replace …

The Engineers at PECO Energy Company’s Eddystone Generating Plant near Philadelphia had a problem on their hands: The scrubbing process line responsible for meeting Federal emissions standards was failing on a regular basis, causing costly cleanup, environmental and regulatory concerns. The plant utilizes a magnesium oxide-based scrubbing process to remove sulfur dioxide — a component in acid rain — from the coal-fired plant’s exhaust. Magnesium oxide powder is conveyed pneumatically from storage silos to a …

Robert Forgione was tired of slipping and sliding his way through another pile of dry pebble line and dust, half-blinded by the cloud it had created as it spewed from a failed conveying line elbow at the Upper Occoquan Water Reclamation Plant in Centreville, Virginia. The half-inch hole created by the mere passage of lime powder through a bend in a line, called a sweep elbow in the industry, had blown the fine powder all …

Gary Wright may have discovered something that works better than duct tape. Wright is director of plant engineering at RheTech Inc. of Whitmore Lake, Michigan, an industry that designs, manufactures and produces propriety thermoplastic polyolefin alloys and compounds that are sold to the transportation and consumer durable goods markets. In 1998, RheTech opened a new plant in Fowlerville, Michigan.

Tom Sorensen had a real dilemma on his hands. And it was on his hands because it wouldn’t stay in his plant’s conveying lines where it belonged. His problem: When your plant manufactures highly abrasive ceramic beads that are used as proppants in oil and gas exploration and drilling, how do you keep those beads from doing their destructive work inside your conveying lines? Carbo Ceramics’ Eufaula, Ala. facility manufactures calcined kaolin ceramic beads that …

In an environment where product mixture is critical and rapidly failing sweep elbows were causing expensive downtime and EPA fines, Al Husni had to do something. Husni is maintenance manager at ACRO Extrusion Corporation, a Wilmington, DE plant that produces vinyl window systems and extrusions. PVC resin runs from ACRO’s outdoor silos to the plant’s mixing room at a rate of as much as 34,000 pounds per day, and the abrasive product was causing the …

Frequent shutdowns weren’t the only inconvenience caused by failing sweep elbows at Montgomery County’s North Incinerator plant. They also created a cleanup nightmare every time the finely powdered limestone they were conveying exploded into the air like so much talcum powder. The plant, which serves the Dayton area, also faced hefty downtime expenses if it stayed shut down too long, Plant Manager Dave Martin said. Powdered limestone must be injected into the plant’s three incinerators …

HammerTek’s Smart Elbow deflection elbow handles a hopeless situation like just another day on the job. Chromalloy’s Drilling Division produces ground barite (barium sulfate) at a plant in Houston, Texas. Barite is an abrasive material that was causing premature wear and plugging problems with the conventional elbows being used to transport it pneumatically from the plant’s grinding mills to its storage tanks.

HammerTek’s Smart Elbow® deflection elbows work so well because they don’t allow product to impact and erode their walls. No matter the product — from highly abrasive crushed granite to seemingly harmless sawdust — all have the ability, under high speed and pressure, to erode sweep elbows. Time and again, the stainless steel elbows in the pneumatic conveying systems at the Pet Foods Division of Quaker Oats in Rockbridge, Ill., were wearing out prematurely — …

A company that produces pipe was having some troubles of its own before HammerTek’s Smart Elbow® deflection elbow solved their problem. Rensselaer Plastics Co. of Rensselaer, Ind., produces PVC piping products for the plumbing trade, with annual sales in the $40 million range. One process at the plant uses a pneumatic conveying system to transfer resin and pellets from storage hoppers to pipe extruders, and therein lay the plant’s Achilles Heel.

Like many other industries that need to move abrasive product through pneumatic lines, Essroc Materials Inc. has solved a lot of its plugging and wear headaches with HammerTek’s Smart Elbow deflection elbow technology. Essroc, formerly Coplay Cement, is a wet-process cement plant in Frederick, Md., that produces 350,000 to 400,000 tons of cement annually using two 400-foot rotary cement kilns.