Custom made Regline Rubber Chute Skirt liners were installed as hard skirts to protect a dredger conveyor system structure from wear and impact.
CHALLENGE
Improve the wear life of the Chute skirt-board liner system which was being subjected to extremely high abrasion wear and intermittent large particle high impact forces.
A new Chute skirt liner system with a better wear life was required for the transfer points on the dredger conveyor system at a coal mine. Multiple liners had been used in the past including plastic and hardened steel without significant success achieving only a very limited wear-life of 12-16 weeks on average in the impact zones. This resulted in costly regular maintenance requirements to replace the liners.
The bucket wheel dredger is used for removing overburden before the mining of coal ore can commence. This overburden consists of extremely abrasive high silica sand and clay resulting in a high wearing and often-sticky ore to be processed by the conveyor system on the dredger. Due to the inconsistent nature of the raw overburden, large heavy and sharp particles also intermittently came through the system subjecting it to unpredictable high impact forces causing catastrophic failure of the liners.
The transfer point was loaded from another conveyor from the side, so all ore was impacting the chute skirt liners directly at 90 degrees. The Chute skirt liners also play a critical role in sealing this ore into the conveyor system. Effective Chute skirt liners were required to protect the soft sealing skirts behind, not allowing the ore to escape and spill out down to the ground below.
OUTCOME
Custom designed steel backed Regline Rubber Chute Skirt liners were installed onto the skirt-board structure in impact zones utilizing the existing mechanical fixing method. The rubber liners outlasted previous liner systems significantly and reduced impact forces on the structure itself.
Reglin designed and supplied custom steel backed rubber chute skirt liners to suit the conveyor system structure. These were mechanically fastened onto the chute skirt boards using the existing bolt holes in the high wear and impact zones of the transfer point. This was important to the customer, so no structural changes were required as the conveyor is located at height in the pit, where access is very limited.
The steel backed Rubber Chute skirt liners performed exceptionally in the application. The steel backing gave the liners the rigidity required, and the premium rubber compound displayed excellent abrasion resistance to the ore. The liners gave a significantly increased wear life of up to 4 times previously used products.
The elastic properties of the rubber wear liners also gave them the unique advantage of absorbing the impact energy of the ore. This reduced the effects of the sudden intermittent high impact loads on the liners and also everyday loads on the structure itself.
The flexible properties of the rubber and physical design of the liners with a beveled edge and rebated steel backing meant they could be adjusted very close to the Conveyor belt without a risk of damaging it. This resulted in creating an effective seal, reducing the risk of sealing skirt damage and potentially dangerous spillage. Liners were also designed as reversible to allow them to be turned upside down and re-used again, increasing life even further.
The result of using Regline Rubber Chute skirt liners was an effective wear protection and sealing solution for the transfer point. Its reliability has been improved and therefore increased efficiency of the conveyor system and site process. This outcome offered value to the customer and the project met their needs and exceeded their expectations for improved wear life.
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