SMART products are designed to maximize metals recovery and separation efficiency.
Separation technology and equipment provider Eriez, Erie, Pennsylvania, has introduced the Eriez SMART (System Monitoring and Reporting Technology) line of products for the recycling industry. The company says the products were developed to monitor and report on frequently fluctuating measurements during recycling processes, allowing operators to maximize metals recovery and separation efficiency.
“Our SMART products embrace technology to offer new functionality, superior reliability, better product utilization and capabilities that push beyond traditional product boundaries,” says Mike Shattuck, market manager, metals recycling. “The SMART products line for recycling currently includes Eriez’s previously introduced Metal Loss Monitor as well as the new Moisture Monitor, Splitter Monitor and Belt Scale option. A number of additional products are currently in development and will be added to the line in the future.”
Introduced in 2014, the Eriez Metal Loss Monitor (MLM) continuously scans the auto shredder residue stream for metal that has escaped the process and is headed for landfill disposal. It is engineered for installation on flat or trough conveyor belts for the tailing or fluff stream and is available in nearly any belt width and standard conveyor configurations, the company adds. The MLM has a counter that can be reset hourly, daily or for each disposal truck load. If a disposal truck is judged to be heavily loaded with metal, because of information provided by the MLM, yard management can prevent it from being landfilled, Eriez says.
The company says the MLM’s Data Acquisition and Reporting package offers possibilities for process improvements using trend analysis and statistical process control. All data is instantly available via Eriez’s Remote Reporting, through which text alerts are instantly sent when metal losses rise above a predetermined level.
The Eriez Moisture Monitor is a noncontact electronic scanning device that measures the water content of material passing through its inspection field. When installed on a conveyor, it reports the moisture content of the material on the belt as a percentage that can be read locally or remotely via the Eriez MLM Web portal. This capability is beneficial to the recycling industry because operators can better optimize the amount of water injected into a hammer mill to prevent fires and control airborne dust generation, the company says. With the Moisture Monitor in place, Eriez says, the mill operator can assure sufficient water injection to accomplish these safety goals. Excessive water content interferes with separation, increases metal losses and increases costs due to the added water weight of reject material sent to the landfill.
The Eriez Splitter Monitor is an optical system designed to measure debris build-up on the leading edge of splitter blades used in different types of separation equipment in the recycling industry. It provides an analog measurement of the amount of this buildup and can be programmed through the Eriez MLM web portal to send warning alerts via email or cell phone text messages to prompt the appropriate personnel to clean the splitter blade. Eriez says its Splitter Monitors allow recycling line operators to perform this function in fewer labor hours by automatically monitoring and alerting personnel rather than requiring them to manually check each splitter for debris buildup. This can result in improved metal recovery and lower operating costs.
The Eriez MLM Belt Scale option is a device that continuously monitors the gross weight of recycling reject material passing through the Eriez Metal Loss Monitor. It provides additional data that, when combined with Eriez’s proprietary calculations, is designed to better monitor the separation efficiency of recycling plants, the company says.
Plants that operate intermittently or with varying feed rates can cause variations in the number of metal pieces that are rejected to the landfill per minute of operation, says Eriez. To better isolate such variations from indications of separation equipment inefficiency, the MLM Belt Scale option permits graphing and monitoring the counting of metal pieces per ton of waste. Thus, system operators can better adjust and maintain the separation equipment to maximize efficiency, Eriez says.
More information on Eriez’s SMART products for the recycling industry can be found at http://ow.ly/Mlvrz. A video featuring the SMART product line can be found at http://ow.ly/Mlv7P.