It's time to stop screwing around
When a company designed and built a new melt shop, it switched from screw conveyors and bucket elevators to air gravity conveyors to convey a hazardous dust.
Nucor Corp., headquartered in Charlotte, N.C., is the nation's largest scrap-metal recycler and steel producer, operating several facilities throughout the US. Nucor Texas, a part of Nucor's Bar Mill Group, operates a facility in Jewett, Tex., where it melts and refines scrap metal in a melt shop to produce steel billets. These are later formed into various steel products, such as rebar, rounds, angles, channels, and flats that are used in commercial, industrial, highway, and residential construction projects. An abrasive by-product of the melting process is electric arc furnace dust, a hazardous material. The company collects the dust in a large baghouse to keep it from escaping into the atmosphere. In the past, the company used screw conveyors and bucket elevators to move the dust from the baghouse to a storage silo. Recently, when designing a new melt shop and baghouse, Nucor Texas decided to look for a more environmentally friendly and maintenance-free conveying method.