Reducing the energy intensity of overland conveying using a novel rail-running conveyor system

ABSTRACT

The energy consumption of modern belt conveying systems has reduced considerably over the past few decades. Although extensive research has been conducted into the production of energy-efficient belt conveyors, significant scope remains to further reduce the energy consumption, especially when heavily loaded or long overland belt conveyors are considered. A new rail-based conveyor system has been developed to reduce the energy consumption of heavily loaded and long overland conveyors. The new technology is aptly named the Rail Conveyor due to its combination of two well-established transportation technologies. The Rail Conveyor merges the benefits of both belt conveyor technology and rail transport to produce an energy-efficient and cost-effective bulk material transportation system. This paper presents a comparison between the energy consumption and motion resistances of the Rail Conveyor system and conventional belt conveyors. The Rail Conveyor is a continuous bulk material transportation system that, due to track wheels running on steel rails, shares a rolling resistance similar in magnitude to railway systems. Due to the effective elimination of the indentation rolling resistance and belt and bulk material flexure resistance within the Rail Conveyor system, an approximate reduction of 50% in energy consumption can be achieved when compared to conventional belt conveyors.

KEYWORDS:

• Energy efficient
• rail conveyor
• belt conveyor
• bulk material transport

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).