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Covering existing stockpiles: Roel Castano, Geometrica (USA)

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

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So as I told you we'd be talking about covering existing stockpiles, and you know that with new environmental regulations, covering stockpiles is something that we will have to do, if not now, eventually. So technology, sorry, it wasn't me! So technology allows us to do a lot more things than were capable of doing even three years ago, 10 years ago maybe. We have developed new technology to do this, and I want to present it to you, and know that it's available, and that covering stockpiles with any configuration can be done in an efficient and cost effective way, okay?

The talk will be about problems covering existing stockpiles, I will try to identify with your problems. Then I'll present the company, where we come from, what our system is consisting of, and our Freedome® Technology, Freedome meaning that the domes can be anything you want. Then I will talk about the solutions, assessing the problems we will be talking about in a minute, and just certifications that Geometrica has achieved in time, and how you can get in contact with us, okay.

The problems of covering existing stockpiles. Sometimes the stockpiles that you have already operating are quite large, and when you think about covering a stockpile that may be a limitation, sometimes you may think that that couldn't be done. Sometimes the stockpile, because it was designed before is on a slope, and sometimes the shape is not circular or longitudinal, or the conventional shape.

You know that downtime is not acceptable, so covering a stockpile that is already operating is a challenge. The installation itself seems impossible even if you decide to cover it, of course, safety of the workers during working on an operating stockpile is something that you cannot forget, it's priority.

I will not move any more, okay? You may be in a remote place where heavy equipment is a challenge, it's very costly, and you know that big foundations are required for large stockpiles, and doing these big foundations in an operating environment is quite difficult, and of course, the stockpile may have retaining walls or other obstacles in the way of a new cover.

Okay? So this is the most problems we hear about. So let's go back to what Geometrica is, and who we are. Geometrica, designs and builds long span storages, that's what we do. If you didn't know Geometrica, we have been in the market for 25 years, little more than that, and even before that. This is, as I told you, this is what we do, we cover stockpiles, and even before we came, the pioneers of these systems of covering, of doing reticular dome structures, or may be you have heard of Buckminster Fuller.

He commercialized, or could say invented, but that could be discussed, but Mr. Fuller, was the first inventor and user of a geodesic dome, and we come from that. Then Francisco Castaño, who is my father, in the 60s, he was the first to do the big domes, to use the reticular structures to do large capacity domes, and this is where we come from.

We know this, and of course, Douglas Wright. He's a Canadian, he developed the theories of dome design, how to calculate them, also in the 60s, and worked closely with my father, and now he's a founding director of Geometrica. Any company that does domes will use Dr. Wright's theories. So we are a second generation dome builder, the first long span domes build by us were done almost 50 years ago.

We're an international company serving the industrial, environmental protection markets worldwide. We are a market leader, nobody does more domes than we do, and we have projects in more than 30 countries, including a lot of Asian countries. The system is simple, we use a node made of aluminium, structural aluminium. It has slots in it, and it's very versatile, it's very resistant to it. It develops 130% of the yield strength of the steel.

It transfers the bending of the surface. We designed it to be able to climb it with people on the module's hub are people sized, so people can work on them without, thank you.
Is it turned off? It's okay, it's turned off. Okay. Hello? Hello? You hear me? Okay. So that way we can reduce the rigging equipment that we need, and there is no field welding required.

Everything is pre-fabricated. We have different, depending on the size, we will use different geometry layers, and of course, we can do different geometry patterns, we can play with the domes much as we can play on a computer. The Freedome® Technology, that's our technology. We have developed this through the years, and it's something we're very proud of.

The Freedome is a free-style dome, meaning that what domes used to be round, most of them are, but we have come with the technology to do them any shape we want, and being the dome, the most efficient structure out there, we have developed the system to do the domes from design to installation, all the way with the same software, and this is good for anybody that has to cover some large span.

Even if all the members of this structure are different from each other, or there are different layers, we have developed not only the system to design and manufacture it, but to do all the logistics involved to install a very complicated structure with local manpower, untrained and making it simple. So you can see that any shape that a dome is required we can do.

Square, oval, arbitrary. So I'm going to assess the problems again, and we will touch on how we solve them, okay? This is something you already saw, this is the very large spans required,the stockpile has irregular shape, downtime is not acceptable, cover installation seems impossible, safety of workers, may not have access to heavy equipment, big foundations required, and existing obstacles, okay?

Very large spans. Geometrica can do domes up to, may be larger than 300 meter diameters, we have not done them, but the capability is there. The biggest domes now are 150 meters for stockpiles, and we are actually designing now domes with 180 meter diameter for power plants in Chile.

The stockpile has a irregular shape, no problem. This is a cold storage in Taiwan, and totally arbitrary, the walls were there before we came, and yeah, we fixed it. It can be done, any shape dome. So downtime is not acceptable. Well, this is one shop. You come to Geometrica, we help you design the cover from the ground up. We help you with the shape, the size, we design it, we fabricate it, we assess the installation, we help you, we will be there with you from the start to finish.

And everything is controlled by our proprietary software, the software will do everything from the design, structural design, catalog, it will assign members, it will do the fabrication tables, it will do the fabrication automatically, it will pack it, and it will do the installation plans and drawings for you, everything.

So, let's see a case here. This is a crushing plant. It's a mine, but it may not be different from your quarries. The client wanted to cover the crushing of the plant, that was pretty difficult, he had been thinking about this for years. Around the plant, there were some vineyards in Chile. So the vineyards weren't happy with this, the dust was killing their grapes. So, we came to him and we told him we could do this, we could cover the crushing. So we modelled the limitations that we had to cover in a computer, then we did general designing, 3D design over that limitation, covering everything that produces the dust, and we came up with a solution, that solution had to work without stopping the plant, ever.

That was not an option, the plant had to supply raw material to other plants. So this is what we came up, and this is the solution, an arbitrarily shaped dome, built from the ground up, that covers exactly what the client needed, and this technology is available to you. Worker safety. We have been working on safety from day one, and we know that working in heights is something that has to be considered, and Geometrica has developed every procedure that needs to be taken care of to do these domes safely. We have been OHSAS 18001 certified not only in the installation, but fabrication and design too, everything included. So integrally, we do everything safely and our record, safety record matches that.

So everything in the part of safety, we take care of everything. We will teach you, we'll teach your contractor, if you use local contractor, and everything will be done safely. I will show you a two-minute video of how a dome is installed, so you may have access. There is no sound, but this is a big dome in Chile.

It's 145 meter diameter, 93 meters high, and it's high in the Andes, 4000 meters over the sea level, so the snow loads are huge. So this is how we built it. The crane is not ours, the crane is for the tripper. As you can see, simultaneously the tripper is being installed, and there is work down here at the same time we are building the dome, so downtime is reduced enormously. You didn't see any cranes, you didn't see any problems with that. We did two domes in this mine, and yeah, happy client right there. So another problem, you may have walls around your stockpile, they may even be irregular, maybe on a slope.

So, this is another case we've had to cover. This was a power plant that used trash, and we build a dome for it. So, you can see that it's not a problem for us to come up with a solution for you. So benefits of using the Geometrica system for your existing stockpiles. Everything we pack in two ton crates, they go in conventional shipping containers.

They do not require having heavy rigging equipment, and at Geometrica, domes can be built from the perimeter up, permitting you use your stockpile doing the process. The domes do not require on site welding. Quality is taken care of by us on our plant, and we supervise the quality of the installation ourselves, with you. You can do the simultaneous installation of the dome, and stacker reclaimer or any other job you have down there during our installation. There is no secondary structure required for cladding.

You can install the cladding directly on our structure. We have the proprietary software. Very light foundations required, these domes are very light, and the foundations can be simple, light and straightforward, and you can use your local labor, no need to bring people from other countries. Geometrica certifications. Well, we have won awards on different areas, but mainly our quality system is based on a wiki, which is hard to explain in a minute, we have very restricted time, but we have been recognized on our quality system, it's very versatile and it's working, we have been teaching other companies on our quality system. We have the OHSAS 18001, that I talked to you about before in safety, we have Welding Quality Certification, and we also have the 1090-1, the new certification needed to do structures for Europe, there, the CE marking that is required to export structures to Europe now, and many countries will be adopting those regulations.

So basically we are ready to work with you, we're designing your local codes or the codes that you require for buildings in any country. We can design in American codes, European codes or local codes, even Chinese codes, Japanese codes, whatever you need. Well, thank you very much, that's the presentation.

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