To choose the most adapted and suitable machine is a rather complex matter.
The following comments aim to define a general guide line for selecting the ship unloading equipment most adapted to your requirements.
Nevertheless, VIGAN expert team will provide you his best technical support for commenting your cost effective alternative(s) according to the specific characteristics of your project: contact us
STEP 1 : Which product(s) will be discharged ?
Most free flowing products with a density between 0.5 and 1.5 and a natural angle of repose less than 40° can be handled by VIGAN equipment.
Products such as all kind of cereals (corn, wheat, barleys, ….),oilseeds, nuts, raw materials for animal feeding, certain chemicals such as soda ash, alumina , …. but also slightly compacted products such as soy bean meal (SBM).
VIGAN equipment do not damage the products: see explanations
STEP 2 : How many tons to be unloaded per year ?
This amount has always be in mind to balance its importance with the financial investment, the unloading rate (or also called handling capacity) in metric tons per hour (mtph) and /or with other factors.
Most useful data is to compute the tonnage of each product and the forecasted figures for the coming years.
STEP 3 : What is the target unloading rate ?
Maximum capacity versus average capacity in mtph
Most commonly and in practice, maximum capacity is defined at the beginning (top) of the hold discharge when the intake nozzle (suction or mechanical) is in the middle of the opening area of the hold.
Nominal capacity refers usually to the calculated capacity during the engineering and the design of the equipment.
Average capacity is considering the whole ship unloading operation and therefore also the cleaning period during which the unloading rate use to drop significantly.
Many factors are affecting the average capacity in practice such as for instance:
For Continuous Ship Unloaders (CSU), the average unloading efficiency varies usually between 60 % (mobile or portable) and up to 80 % (Tower, NIV or SMPORTER type).
When comparing the average unloading efficiency between equipment and/or experimented unloading operations, a most careful attention must be paid on considering exactly the same parameters such as taking or not into account any stoppage due to silo or warehouse problems, the lack of trucks for product loading, the times “lost” for the displacement of the equipment along the ship and so on.
Example:
maximum capacity 300 mtph – average efficiency 70 %
average unloading rate : 210 mtph.
Let suppose 22 working hours per day:
+/- 4620 tons per day (tpd)
STEP 4 : CHOOSE YOUR EQUIPMENT
VIGAN main types of equipment and most common maximum capacities:
PNEUMATIC
MECHANICAL : SIMPORTER (Twin belt technology)
Maximum capacity : from 600 to 1,500 mpth
It should be noted the following:
NUMBER OF TONS TO UNLOAD PER YEAR
UNLOADING RATE
MOST FREQUENTLY
Up to 250,000 mt per year -> pneumatic mobile machines Up to 1,000,000 mt per year -> pneumatic tower or NIV on gantry type More than 1,000,000 mt per year -> pneumatic NIV on gantry type and/or mechanical SIMPORTER.
VIGAN expert team duty is to offer his best support and advices to orient you to chose the adapted equipment to your requirements with an optimum cost – benefit ratio: contact us.
This website uses cookies
We use cookies to ensure proper operations of the website, you can read our legal notice and our privacy policy to know more.