Benetech Dust Control and Mitigation Systems: Safety, Savings, Compliance, Performance
Fugitive dust can be a pervasive problem when you’re handling different types of material. Just a few threats it poses include:
- Endangered air quality
- Breach of environmental regulations
- Health and safety issues
- Costs of wasted material
- Lost production time
- Premature equipment wear.
Benetech understands that dust control and mitigation require more than chemicals. It also calls for a customized, flexible program that applies dust control and mitigation methods based on specialized technology, support, and maintenance.
We design, fabricate and install dust control and dust mitigation solutions for the electric utility, mining, steel, petroleum, cement, and aggregate industries. Our industrial dust control systems enhance your operations by:
- Controlling unsafe emissions and enhancing air quality
- Complying with regulations and reducing the risk of fire and explosions
- Improving production time and decreasing transfer expenses
- Minimizing lost material and increasing equipment longevity.
Benetech’s dust control and mitigation methods equip you to restrict fugitive dust throughout your material handling:
- Stockpiles
- Haul roads
- Transfer points
- Transloading hoppers
- Stackouts
- Rail and truck dumps.
Because of our approach, hundreds of customers now achieve superior dust control and dust mitigation through every season. Here’s a look at three of them:
Calciner Plant (Southern United States)
Situation: With green coke storage for 60,000 tons of raw material, the plant was receiving petroleum coke by barge and truck. It developed a visible fugitive-dust problem that affected its neighbors during ship unloading. Compounding the issue, dust from the storage piles also was blowing into the waterway.
Solution: Benetech proposed and installed two suppression-application points. In the first, a hopper spray helped eliminate fine pet-coke dust during ship unloading; here, we spread our BT-210W dust control and mitigation chemical at low moisture rates. The second application point focused on the first. We implemented a full-body treatment with our GDS-12 product, also at low moisture rates.
Customer Result: The plant gained total control of its fugitive dust – so much so that when Hurricane Ike struck the Louisiana coastline, the storage piles remained intact.
Coal-Fired Power Plant (Midwest United States)
Situation: The plant was unloading about 40 cars a day and 550 tons of Powder River Basin (PRB) coal per hour. It ran on a manual system with two to three people on a shift, allowing them to unload one car at a time.
Each dump was creating a great deal of fugitive dust. Because of PRB coal dust’s volatile nature, plant personnel washed down the rail-car off-loading facility after the unloading of each unit train. This required the labor of two or three people for up to 8 hours depending on the accumulation levels. They needed to keep the dust from suspending in the air for both environmental and housekeeping reasons.
Solution: Benetech provided the Engineering/Procurement/Construction (EPC) of a multi- point wet-dust system. Our BT-210W dust control and mitigation chemical were applied to the coal both during unloading and at each track-hopper feeder. At the rail car–shaker area, spray manifolds applied a spray curtain to the dust escape routes during unloading.
In addition, aluminum-baffle containment redirected the dynamic air surge when the rail cars were unloaded, allowing the equipment operator to remain stationary. The same hopper area was used for rail-car dumping and reclaiming coal from storage.
During train off-loading, the unload operator activated the dust control and mitigation equipment using a remote radio-sender switch. The equipment’s two spray manifolds also had manual shutoff valves for reclaim operations. The spray continued until it met the pre-set duration time. During reclaim push-in, the operator pushing coal triggered the dust control and mitigation from the equipment cab with a remote radio sender similar to the train unloader’s.
Once the coal was in the track-hopper feeders, the top and back sides of the coal flow were fully treated with BT-210W. This prevented fugitive dust at stackout. It reduced to dust within the crusher tower and tripper decks during fueling or splitting of the unloaded tonnage as well.
Customer Result: With the Benetech dust control and mitigation system in place, the plant now needs only one employee and just over an hour to wash down the facility. Plus, the plant uses 30-40% less water than before, meaning less impact on sump-pumps, drainage systems, and related settling ponds, as well as greater O&M savings. The environment in and around the plant is also now much safer.
Refinery (Southern United States)
Situation: Operating on the Gulf of Mexico at the mouth of the Pascagoula River, the refinery ships petroleum coke internationally. The pet coke’s size and consistency range from fine grains to small pellets. The pet coke also is extremely dusty, which was creating problems with both stackout and ship loading, as well as with the storage piles.
Solution: Benetech determined that an application at one location would resolve the refinery’s issues. We installed a dust control and mitigation system to apply a full-body treatment as the pet coke was transferred from the refinery to the storage yard. The system included our GDS-12 product to treat the pet coke at 1% moisture or 2.4 GPT.
Customer Result: Our use of one treatment point proved effective in controlling both dust generation during stackout and blowing dust on the pile when the pet coke was in storage.
During dry weather, the chemical solution remains effective for one month. Wet weather activates it, even more, providing even longer protection while the pet coke is in storage. The treatment further continues to reduce dusting as the product is loaded from the storage yard onto outgoing ships.
Master Fugitive Dust in Your Bulk Material Handling
Benetech’s innovation in dust control and mitigation applications and systems put you in command of fugitive dust that can cause operational problems. Contact us at (630) 844-1300 today to speak with a Benetech specialist.
Posted in Dust Control