Luehr Supplies Wet Scrubber for Savannah Nickel Shed Ventilation

BACKGROUND
Company: Ahrens/Savannah Nickel
Location: Wyndham, Western Australia
Flow rate: 65,000Am³/h
Temperature: 35°C
Industry: Mining – Nickel

PROBLEM
Savannah Nickel planned to build a storage shed to store Nickel Sulphide Concentrate. The material would be delivered in a quad road train of side tippers. These would discharge from an internal ramp with the shed doors closed.

A CAT966 front end loader would stack the concentrate 3m-high. The out loading from the shed would be by containers mounted on trailers and drawn by tractors with air-conditioned cabs. These would be filled by the front end loaders.

During these operations, a considerable amount of dust would be generated despite the use of water suppression sprays.

The principal purpose of the dust collection system would be to maintain the shed under a negative pressure to prevent dust egress from the building.

SOLUTION
Luehr received the order to provide a system to prevent dust egress from the building.
The design incorporated a side mounted exhaust duct running the length of the shed. A series of louvers were fitted to the opposite wall causing a cross draft which assisted in removing dust from the loading zone. The exhaust rate used took into account a 1.5m/s ingress of air through these louvers with the shed doors closed.

The collected air/dust is drawn into an induced draft fan which then discharges into a Trema ZK 260 Cyclonic Wet Scrubber to remove the dust before discharging the clean air to atmosphere.

The scrubber incorporated an integral recirculation tank and came complete with a recirculation pump and pipework.

Due to the very light dust load the scrubber can be run for a period of approximately 5 days before the water has to be changed.

RESULT
The system was delivered on schedule and will be commissioned over the next few weeks.