Kingfisher Redesigns Coal Feeder Chutes to Provide Improved Wear Life & Material Flow for Major UK Steelworks

Wear protection specialist, Kingfisher Industrial, has redesigned two conveyor transfer chutes to overcome a continual problem with excessive wear, and significantly improved the throughput of coal feeding the coke ovens for a major UK steelworks. Kingfisher has also equipped the chutes with a tailored K-ALOX ceramic wear protection solution to significantly extend their operating life of this troublesome piece of plant. The chutes were fabricated and wear protected by Kingfisher at its West Midland plant, and installed by the company at the steelworks in a 5-day period, timed to coincide with a maintenance window.

Commenting upon the project, the Chief Process engineer at the steelworks said:
“Kingfisher did everything that we asked of them, on time, at all stages of the project. They provided a very good installation, taking complete project responsibility — including plant hire and site safety - for removing the old chutes and modifying their flanges on site, and installing the new chutes in their place.”

“We won these two projects on the back of a proven track record of supplying cost effective, reliable wear solutions to this customer,” said Kenny Fergie, Kingfisher sales manager.

“We were called in initially to look at one transfer chute that was badly worn and had been re-plated in areas where holes had appeared. It was obvious to us following our examination that there was a bottleneck in the chute that was restricting the flow of coal, causing high levels of friction and wear. We informed the customer of our findings and suggested that the best course of action was a redesign of the chute to eliminate material build up. By incorporating a smooth transition between sections and utilising radial configurations within the build, would help promote the flow of material (coal) and provide a better central feed onto the conveyor belt fed by the chute.”

“Our second recommendation to the customer was that the new redesigned chute should be wear protected with our K-ALOX 92P high alumina ceramic Lining system. We offered this wear protection system based upon our experience of working with this customer and of our knowledge of previous successes with similar processes.”

“K-ALOX was the obvious choice; it has an excellent resistance rating against all forms of abrasion, and also superior resistance to corrosion and chemical attack. Its primary use is the protection of plant to counter both impact and sliding abrasion resulting from mechanical, pneumatic or hydraulic conveying of bulk solids. By applying this protection system, we knew that we could extend the life of the chute by several factors, compared to the stainless steel liner plates that had been used previously.”

“The success of the first installation meant that we were awarded the project for the second feeder chute, which also had to be redesigned and fabricated by us, and installed on site. This chute handled coal fines up to 50mm in size at tonnages averaging 600Tons/hr (TPH), with the capacity for up to 1,000TPH. The problem was that the coal feeder chute was 8/9 metres below the feed conveyor exit. Consequently, it was suffering blockages almost on a weekly basis, necessitating numerous repairs over the last two to three years. These blockages were resulting in expensive process downtime — and spillages, which meant lengthy and costly clean up procedures.”

“Once again we used our K-ALOX 92P high alumina ceramic lining system to provide enhanced wear protection on this chute. This involved us, as part of our full project responsibility, in manufacturing a new chute, applying wear protection, and removing and modifying the flanges and fixings from the old transfer chute to fit the new one. Despite the tight project schedule we were able to complete everything on time, equipping the customer with a new installation that is far more flow efficient in terms of both flow and discharge rate and enhanced protection, resulting in little or no maintenance requirement over the lifetime of its operation.”

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