Dust suppression
Burnley Baffles is a system that restricts air flow.
How to know when a hopper is full WITH 60 YEARS OF SUCCESSFUL DUST COLLECTION PROJECTS, MIDECO IS WELL PLACED TO SOLVE EVEN THE MOST CHALLENGING DUST COLLECTION AND EXTRACTION SYSTEM PROBLEM.
M
ideco’s dust collection solutions are industry leading and highly effective. The company prides itself on the partnerships it forms solving dust problems for clients from all over the world. The company’s Burnley Baffles solution is a well-established dust suppression system with hundreds of installations in Australia and around the world. Burnley Baffles are installed at facilities in the United States, Canada, New Zealand, China, United Kingdom and Ireland. According to Mideco director Melton White, there is both a question and a rule that are rarely understood and virtually never applied to dust management with regards to bulk
materials-receiving hoppers. The question is, when is a hopper full? The fact is that air extraction cannot ever be directed. White says the answer to the question of, ‘when is a hopper full?’ is simple but is often complicated with a tootechnical solution. “Ask any engineer when a hopper is full and you will get an answer associated with how many cubic metres of product it can hold, or what weight of product it can hold, or when it is ‘full to the top’,” White says. “To answer the question correctly you have to be able to see what can’t be seen. “The answer to the question is – a hopper is always full. Sometimes it is full of product, other times it is full of air and then other times it’s a combination of
SAFETOWORK.COM.AU 32 SEP-OCT 2021
both. But regardless, it is always full.” White says that air extraction can never be properly directed and uses the example of a pedestal fan to make his point. “Almost all of us have a pedestal fan at home, we tend to put it in the corner of the room and when the air comes in contact with us, it cools us. But where does that air come from?” White asks. “If we put our hand in front of the fan, the airstream is easy to feel; it’s a column of air blowing out. But if we put our hand behind it, nothing can be felt, or at best we can feel the hairs on the back of our hand moving a little. “The same can be said for a straw. If we blow down it and hold our finger an inch from the end, we can easily feel the airstream hit our finger. If we suck up through it holding our finger in the same
