Atomised dust suppression for HRL

A high-volume coal transhipping company, HRL has adopted atomised mist dust suppression from Dust Control Technology to raise air quality and keep site equipment free of particulate accumulation.

After successful deployment of a DustBossRing (DB-R) on its barge-loading conveyor, HRL has added another unit to its larger conveyor, which feeds the stockpile area, significantly reducing the amount of fugitive dust in the entire work site.

Company officials said effective dust management was an important component of the facility’s environmental stewardship and regulatory compliance.

HRL exclusively serves two utilities along the Mississippi, handling trains as long as 123 wagons, loaded with sub-bituminous coal. Each car is unloaded using a rotary dumper, a large cylindrical framework with its own track, which braces onto the car with hydraulic clamps, then turns the car and track nearly 160 Deg, emptying the contents into a large hopper.

The coal is loaded onto conveyor belts leading to the stockpile. “We generally do about 1.6 to 1.7 Mt of production per year,” said Shawn Duer, general manager of HRL. “PRB coal is inherently dusty, so we knew from the beginning that we needed some form of dust control.”

The large 72-inch DB-R is a stainless steel circular manifold with 38 misting nozzles mounted on the conveyor 3ft under the discharge point, pumping 23.94 GPM of atomised water. The DB-R creates a circular curtain of 50-200 micron sized droplets, which travel with the dust, absorb the particles and pull them to the ground with little or no pooling or runoff. Pressure is adjustable to match the fluctuations in volume of fugitive dust dispensed from the belt. The size of the mist droplets does not change regardless of the pressure.