Challenge
Potash is a necessary fertilizer to the world, and is used to grow corn, wheat, soybeans, potatoes and many other crops.
Today, Potash is mostly found in deep shaft mines as much as 4,400 feet (1,400 m) underground. Herein lies one of the main challenges in mining these salts: tight underground quarters leave little room for large machinery.
A General Kinematics’ customer produces Potash that is used in agricultural, animal feed and industrial products. Getting consistent feed to their roll crusher was proving to be an issue. Not only this, they could not get even feed across the width of the rolls. This was resulting in premature and uneven wear on the rolls, producing uneven sized and out of specification materials. Furthermore, the facility was spending thousands of dollars testing solutions from belt feeders and drag chains to specially designed chutes – with no improvement whatsoever.
Approach
General Kinematics’ UN-COALER® was suggested because of the lower machinery height and its ability to meter, like a feeder, across a wide discharge opening. The UN-COALER® is able to distribute material evenly and across the entire length of the crusher’s rolls.
Solution
By supplying a variant of the General Kinematics UN-COALER® , GK was able to not only meet the capacity requirements within the mine, but also match very closely to the roll crusher feed opening.
Results
After purchasing two UN-COALER® machines to feed their roll crushers, they are showing more consistent, evenly distributed material and better wear life on the roll crushers. Subsequently, the facility is running more efficiently with less down time and less required maintenance.
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General Kinematics 2013 USA
