RAIL CAR UNLOADING PROCESS
As a manufacturing engineer at one of our 5 facilities, I had the opportunity to interact with the production process and personnel daily. This enabled me to learn the intricate details of how an idea adapts into a consumer product as well as allowing me to look for opportunities to improve and innovate our current processes. One area I found an opportunity to utilize my creative mindset, increase operation efficiency, and reduce cost and environmental concerns was around the railcar unloading process for combustible bulk solids.
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Many of the raw materials our facilities use are received through rail. The challenge is that there are many different styles and types of railcars, all of which have different designs. When dealing with combustible bulk solids, these railcars are filled from the top and emptied from the bottom. The bottom hatch can vary in length and width, so a universal receiving chute is crucial.
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To make this repeatable process operator friendly, the chute was cemented underground, between the railroad tracks and used pneumatic linear actuators to reach the bottom hatch on the rail car. This made the process less labor intensive for operators but limited our chutes width due to the tracks having a fixed width apart. By increasing the chute’s length in the track’s parallel direction and placing the chute on a large sealed bearing, this enabled the chute to be spun 90 degrees after being lifted. When spun, the extra length could now be utilized in the width direction, allowing ample room to receive material with no spillage, reducing cost of lost material and diminishing the environmental concerns.