Industrial Dust Control in the Recycling Industry: Aerodyne’s SplitStream™ Dust Collector
The Problem: A Midwestern secondary metal recovery plant struggled with material overload on wet scrubbers, putting them at risk of violating state and federal emission requirements. The plant primarily reclaims aluminum and produces clean metal chips, briquettes, and powders.
The Solution and Measurable Results: After working with the engineers at Aerodyne to find the right solution, a collection of SplitStream™ cyclonic dust collectors were installed throughout the facility. Several were installed in lines involved in the conveying and shredding of metal and in the thermal recovery of contaminated metals. Another collector eliminates dust from a screening and bagging operation.
A 12,500-cfm SplitStream™ Dust Collector precedes a wet scrubber on the thermal reclaim system, and a 6,000-cfm dust collector precedes another wet scrubber on the shredding operation. In each case, the cyclones facilitate the recovery of dry material from plant air before the final collection by wet scrubbers. Utilizing the industrial dust control system as a pre-filter before the wet scrubbers are used allows the maintenance and cleaning of the wet scrubbers to be dramatically reduced, a huge perk for the plant. An added bonus to installing the Aerodyne SplitStream™ Dust Collectors was the ease of recovery of the collected material. Because the SplitStream™ uses no bags or filter cartridges, collected product is easily returned to the process for reuse or sent out for disposal. The improvement of the entire dust collecting system’s efficiency allowed the plant to get back on track with their state and federal emission requirements.
The Aerodyne SplitStream™ Dust Collector achieves high efficiency by forcing dirty gases into a powerful centrifugal motion. The centrifugal action throws dust particulate out of the gas stream. A secondary air stream carries the dust particulate to the hopper, keeping dust away from the collector walls and reducing sticking and abrasion. The prevention of particulate contact with external walls is a major factor in the unit’s ability to achieve high efficiency ratings, and virtually eliminates maintenance problems common in other types of cyclones.
