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Successful AF systems for RDF, rice husks and shredded tyres: Luc Rieffel, Walter Materials Handling / ATS Group (France).

Filmed at Cemtech Asia 2015, 21-24 June, Grand Hyatt, Bangkok, Thailand

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Thank you for giving me the opportunity today to present to you some case study that we have done mostly in Asia, and we are today in Bangkok. So as Peter announce, we will present some anti-fuel system that we have done with extraction and dosing using RDF, Rice husk and Shred tyres in Asia. First of all about some few words about our company, we're ATS group, 250 person based in France, we have five subsidiaries and one is based in France, the other one in Germany, third one in Turkey, the fourth one in India. We are created in 2005 and the last one is Walter Materials Handling what is the topic today and this company dealing 100% with cement industry and propose complete system for alternative storage fuels.

So how our system is looking. Basically, we propose storage building with automated Crane system. In this building, we've an extracto, dosing extracto that you see here, then after dosing we transfer the material to the Calciner with any kind of belt system, conveying system and we feed alternative fuels into the Calciner using our double valve airlock, but the main important point to keep in mind today is the high flexibility that we can propose you're using our system. So at the beginning the user never knows exactly what he will burn as fuels, it could be shredder tyres and finally you could have an opportunity to burn biomass or RDF so it's very important for the end user to have a system as flexible as possible. Well we're introducing this alternative fuels, it could be main burner if the fuel is fine grain sizes or coarse grain sizes will be naturally mostly into the Calciner, for whole tyres we have also the possibility to introduce these old tyres in the Kiln Inlet or in the mid Kiln or other times.

Some fuels example as I told you could be, we are able to manage fine grain sizes from 1 mm till 500 mm cause low density upon 1 till high density 1.5. Hera are some fuel example, you see rice husk mostly in Asiana naturally, cashewnut shells is some product that we had in Africa, it was a project in Tanzania, wood pieces, fluff which look like common product that we're using but mostly in Europe, shred tyres is quite common and high calorific value products, Coconut husk was a project in Senegal, Thailand. It was a project we come back to that, in Thailand we had this, this is plastic rejected kalans or alternative fuels like RDF, it was in Columbia on these pictures.

So, now come back to the case study, the first one will be Holcim in Vietnam using RDF, the other one will be SCCC in Thailand in Saraburi was coarse and fine product, the other will be Zuari in India and last will be a short presentation about whole tyres. So it's very possible in Holcim in Vietnam and decided to invest in new technology with co-processing 2014 in order to grade a TSR till 35% using paper, plastic, rubber or agricultural waste such as rice husk but mostly at the beginning was RDF. But as I told before, our system is very flexible that's why the customer is doing specification on lot of product that he should be able to feed. So the technical data was a flow rate of 20 tonnes per hour, the product RDF with grain sizes in 2D smaller than 200 mm and 3D smaller than 100 mm. For that we propose storage building with the storage capacity of more than 6000cubic meters, equipped with automatic crane system that you see here, here and with two dosing extractor, the red one is an optional one that would like to maybe to install later on.

So the crane is looks like that, it's a full automatic crane system with a bridge, a trolley with electrical cabinet on board, so these, such cranes are running in full automated modes, so no manpower. These such cranes are manufactured in our own factory, can be done in Europe, can be done in Turkey or in India depending of location and the capacity naturally. So how this system is working, here short simulation showing such storage management with crane system. So you see here the storage with the three unloading pits, the electrical room inside you see the crane system, two extractors, so it is only an example because here in this example we decided to have two products, one is shred tyres, the other one is biomass. So how it is working, in the morning the truck is coming, will unload the materials into the unloading pit, so for that the light signal is green, so that the truck is allowed to unload the materials, in this case shred tyres. Once the pit is full, the truck will go back, the door will close automatically and then the crane is allowed to pick up the materials into the unloading pits.

By touching the product, we save the level of materials so we know the control room automatically deliver of each point in the unloading pit as well as to the storage. The crane will feed the extractor, as soon as extractor is asking a new loading, the crane will come and bring a new loading inside extractor, so extractor is deciding when the loading has to be done, not the opposite.

The rest of the time, the crane will take the materials from the unloading pit and put the materials into the storage. The target here of this system is to run 24 hours per day, seven days per week, that's why we have to build up the storage for night and weekend when no trucks are coming anymore. We have seen during this time, another truck came also and unload biomass into the unloading pit number two.

So the same crane is able to manage different product at the same time, and depending of the calorific value, the two extractor that you have here will feed the same belt so that you are able to mix the product accordingly, so for example shred tyres will be 10 times per hour, biomass could be five times power, this something that the operator is deciding in the CCR and then the rest feeding is managed in full automatic mode. During the night there no truck are coming anymore, that's why the crane is feeding the two extractor with materials that he take naturally from he storage only. So the storage is build up during all the week like this in zic zac form meaning is, during the day it is red, during the night it is blue. So the target is to bring more materials during the day that we are using during the night so that we can build up the storage till the start of the weekend in order to get enough materials ready to feed the extractor during all the weekend.

So here come back to a Holcim Vietnam, this is exactly the situation that we have, we see here the two dosing hoppers feeding the same belt. Here our automated crane system, here the unloading pits. Here are short videos showing how it is working, so you see the truck going back, will unload the materials, the light signal is green.

The truck will unload the materials, and the same time you will see background the crane and we'll come down here and we'll pickup the materials in the first unloading pit. So now truck will go back, you see here the crane taking materials in the unloading pit, and will put the materials either in the storage or in the extractor. So this is happening in full automated mode, the waste is prepared in this case outside to have their own pre-processing system to prepare the RDF accordingly.

So here the flow rate was 20 tonnes per hour, so again this crane is able to manage RDF as well as rice husk or shred tyres as per you wish or as per the possibility that you have to get the waste. Here you see the crane building the material into the storage, here the crane taking material from the storage, everything in full automated mode.

So some few words about our dosing extractor, this is a patented machine from ATS. This is a metallic apron with a calibrator over there. The target is basically to get a constant flow rate at the output. So this is not a screw, this is a calibrator that achieve constant thickness at the output, and the rest of the material is pushing back inside the hopper. The dosing is based on the loss of weight principle, so the all machines on four load cells, and we measure the loss of weight all 500 milliseconds and we adapt the speed of the metallic apron accordingly in order to achieve a constant flow rate of the output.

And this kind of machine is able to manage small grain size as well as coarse grain sizes. Here again, an example of running machine with RDF, you see can be heavy product, a mix of everything more or less well prepared, it's running the same you see that they are dosing at the output, we have a constant layer, this is the project that we had done in Turkey with RDF, another one here with shred tyres. So you see the same machine is still able to manage to say different products, this is very important, this is a target of our system, high flexibility. Okay, here constant flow rate, here you will see the constant flow rate and here in blue this is the weight inside the hopper. So, basically here we are doing the dosing in the gravity mode and as soon as we reach the minimum level inside the hopper, the extractor will call the grab to get to your next new loading and then you'll see the blue line going up, this meaning to grab this unloading materials again into the extractor.

Next topic is SCCC in Thailand in Saraburi that we supply two lines, one was for line fine, mostly for carbon black shredded plastic from a small grain size from 0 to 80 millimeters maximum and the single line was for coarse materials also for the same flow rate of five times per hour, we use car lamps as you've seen before as example, heavy lumps, cords with grain sizes till 400 millimeters.

Both materials has been feed through to double valve air locks into the Calciner. For that we have a one side for the line coarse our metallic aprom extractor that you have seen before with an automatic storage management with the birail crane sytems, 10 times capacity. So here you see the trolley, here the six cubic meter grab and here the building during the construction and here the pictures of our extractor in our workshop.

So here again short video showing how it is working in this case, here it is no more bridge crane system but only monorail system so the crane is running only one direction, this is for smaller capacity. The principle is the same, meaning the feeding of the extractor will be managed automatically with the crane system and during this time, the storage can be fed with trucks or pay loader in order to have capacity of materials and so that we can feed automatically the extractor during the day and during the night, seven days per week, 24 hours per day. So this is the principle what we have installed by Saraburi, by SCC.

Similar to the line fine, except that in this case we have installed screw extractors there because it was dedicated to small grain size only. These screw extractor unload cells also the same principle as metallic apron extractor and the feeding is done with clamshell grab in this case instead of a wrench pay grab, her picture of the shaft-less screw extractor that we have installed down.

The feeding is done using our double valve airlock, double valve airlock is located close to the feeding point close to Calciner. So how this electrical double valve airlock is working, we have here a top valve, a bottom valve, temperature sensor between the two valves in order to check the temperature. If temperature increase, we close automatically the complete system, on the bottom we have also a safety stop gate, this will be the closing case of maintenance or in case of emergency.

This double valve is protected also with lining inside with refractory, the flap itself in high temperature stainless steel, the casing high temperature steel, so it's high secured equipment to minimize full say introduction during feeding and to protect the all tower against accident if the flame coming up. Yes. thank you. So I will speed up here, how it is working our double valve airlock, you see the product coming up into the previous tower, we advice also a metallic conveyor for feeding the double valve airlock, it's an additional safety against fire accidents, you see the double valve airlock working, counter weighs going up and down to ensure the closing mechanically if you have no power anymore to drive the motor, you see the flap opening and closing. If something jamming in between, we have installed here a spring.

This spring will get compressed in order that the motor can finalize its stroke and also maybe you have seen here we have a small sensor. The sensor will lose the contact with the spring so that we will inform immediately the control room. if the flap is not completely closed. So this equipment is very safe and liable, safe in term of of detection and in term of quality of steel that we're using for the manufacturing of this equipment.

Now very fast, the last is the manual feeding system that we've installed for feeding rice husk, the same equipment that you've seen before for shed tiles, for car lamps and so on can be used also for rice husk. This is a system that we have installed by Zuari in India composed with the one dosing extractor, manual loading with pay loader, belt conveyors and one double valve airlock at the end. Here the feeding is no more done with grab grain system but manually with pay loader but you see here the extractor is the same, so again high flexibility is there in our equipment.

Here the belt conveyors by Zuari till the feeding point, feeding point is again our double valve airlock located close to the Calciner for feeding the rice husk into the Calciner. So interesting is you can upgrade our system easily starting with manual loading at the beginning, you see here, you can load our extractor with a pay loader in this case the storage is outside below shed or outside up to you.

And loading is done fully manually using pay loader in this case the pay loader is coming, take the material and will feed the extractor accordingly. So in this case you need somebody to feed extractor 24 hours per day, so all half an hour depending on the flow rate somebody has to come and feed the extractor, this is the first solution. Then you can upgrade the system with step number two, meaning without to move the extractor, it can later on erect storage building around with crane system, automates crane system to fit automatically this extractor. This is what we have seen before by [xx] project SCCC in Thailand. So here the extractor is fed completely automatically using the crane system. Now, to finish is only to show you that we're proposing also something else than only shredded products feeding, this is whole tyres feeding in order to feed the tyres in to the kiln inlet or mid kiln, for that we're using such singulator, we are calling singulator to extract the tyres one by one, this meaning from the amount of tyres we are doing is through the singulator, we put this tyres nice in the queue so that we can dosified each tyres one by one so we lift up the tyres with hook elevator or belt conveyor and the last loader conveyor is on load cells so that we can measure the weight of each tiles one by one before, to load it into our double valve airlock. So here also short simulation, so you have two possibility, the first one you load the tyres manually on the ground, hook elevator will lift up the tyres into the [xx] tower then the good tyres come up, the last loader conveyor is on load cells, we measure the weight and depending of the weight, we will feed it into the kiln inlet through our double valve airlock. This case the double valve airlock has tow flaps and no more one flap but principle is the same. So here we are measuring the weight and depending of the weight we introduce the tyres after a certain period of time.

Then we can also propose the step two, the step two is here feeding working floor with payloader and then the the extraction is done automatically using this singulator which you have seen before, and from this amount of tyres we get the tyres nice in the queue at the output of the extractor. So this is the two principle that we can propose manual loading with manpower always working flow.

And then you see here the tyres going out the singulator, so we will roll here and come on this short belt conveyor, this belt conveyor is able to detect the the size of the tyres, the height of the tiles, so we can reject over sized tyres, and we have also metal detectors inside, so if we have a wheel with a rim then we can reject the tyres accordingly.

You see here the tyres, this is good, it will continue. The next one is the tyres with rim, we detect the metal, and in this case it will be rejected and fall down on the ground, the rest is the same, meaning all good tiles will be lift up with the hook elevator or belt conveyors depending on the project. I'm finished, so some of my friends worldwide, you see here in Asia mostly in red, so we've references in Thailand, in Vietnam, Philippines, India, Sri-Lanka, in Africa also, in Mexico, in Europe also naturally where we are coming from, in Russia also, so we're able to put you complete solution on Turnkey basis from the design, engineering, manufacturing, packing, erection and commissioning .

Thank you very much for your attention, and if you've any question, please, otherwise you can ask me later on, on my booth. Thank you very much.

Successful AF systems for RDF, rice husks and shredded tyres: Luc Rieffel, Walter Materials Handling / ATS Group (France).

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