5 Reasons Your Conveyor is Making Your Facility Dusty

There are many factors that go into choosing the right conveyor – from facility space and material type to durability and maintenance requirements. But one factor that’s often overlooked is how well a conveyor controls dust. The right conveyor can minimize fugitive dust for safe, efficient material handling, but a conveyor designed with little to no regard to dust management can limit productivity and profitability – as well as put workers at risk.

The Dangers of Dust

When your conveyor isn’t designed to manage dust, small particles accumulate inside the facility, causing big problems for operators. Excessive dust can cause:

Cleaning and Equipment Damage – Dust can clog machinery, increasing cleaning requirements for complex equipment and reducing its performance outputs to effect efficiency

Safety Hazards – Accumulated dust can increase the risk of fire or explosions in your facility.

Health Risks – Dust can cause hazardous working conditions, leading to respiratory problems for workers.

Contamination – Other batches of materials can become contaminated with dust and either need to be reprocessed or disposed of, resulting in additional unexpected costs.

Product Loss – Over time, even small amounts of dust can add up to significant losses.

Conveyor Features that Control Dust

The struggle to control dust is universal throughout many industries and applications. Materials highly susceptible to dusting include flour and sugar in the food industry; binders and fillers such as lactose, starch and dicalcium phosphate in pharmaceutical processing; protein powders and minerals in nutraceutical applications; and silica, cement and limestone in building and construction materials.

To avoid dust accumulating in your facility, you’ll want to pay close attention to these features:

Conveyor System Design

Some customers underestimate the importance of enclosed conveyor systems, attempting to move materials with screw conveyors or vibrating conveyors that were not fully enclosed.

Certain powders and friable material pose severe risks to health and safety outcomes unless conveyed in secure, enclosed systems. This includes connections from conveyors to dischargers and hoppers which are not sealed, or have inadequate dust extraction systems in place. This renders the sealed conveyor useless with dust easily escaping from connection points across the system and facility.

Conveyors that operate within a completely sealed environment, such as fully enclosed screw conveyors, aero-mechanical conveyors or tubular disc conveyors, will eliminate any risk of dust contamination or atmospheric humidity. These conveyors are designed to prevent dust from escaping into the surrounding environment, allowing you to transport materials more efficiently and eliminating concerns for product loss, contamination or workplace hazards.
Connections and Alignment Issues

Gaskets that are worn, improperly installed or missing can cause dust to leak through the tiniest of connection points, particularly when the conveyor system is transporting fine or powdery substances under pressure.

Issues can also arise during installation, where improperly aligned sections, and damage loosens connections and seals.

To avoid these issues, leading manufacturers like AHS-AMP offer installation supervision as well as more comprehensive installation services to our customers. In addition to this, we can provide preventative maintenance training to operators so they can spot early signs of wear and tear, as well as offering a suite of spare parts through our aftermarket service.
Ventilation Systems

It can be easy to miscalculate how a conveyor manages air flow when material is being loaded into another vessel, like a mixer or blender. But this is another essential feature that can impact dust in your facility.

If the conveyor hasn’t been designed and installed to properly vent the air that’s displaced by the material being conveyed, pressure will build up inside the equipment and force dust to blow out the inlet, seals and other weak points inside the machine.
Conveyor Speed

If material is fed through the conveyor at a rate that’s too fast for downstream equipment, it can build up pressure in the system; this can cause air carrying dust particles to leak out of inlets, seams, and crevices across the system, as well as creating a risk for operators who may open access hatches and face excessive amounts of dust.

Slow speeds can also create congestion at various points in the production line, causing dust to build up and be released sporadically or when material is moved.

Experts at AHS-AMP can assist in setting up the proper conveyance speed for our customers to minimise issues with dust and ensure a safe working environment.
Dust Extraction

In scenarios where totally contained conveyance systems are not possible, dust extraction systems can effectively remedy the problem of loose media creating dust. Dust extraction systems that are insufficiently sized, poorly positioned, or improperly designed are susceptible to failure, leaving problematic dust in your facility or leaking from the extraction system.

AHS-AMP can supply efficient dust collectors, located at the source of dust generation, such as conveyor transfer and discharge points or where the material is agitated, to remove the dust from the production line.