Blasts away abrasives

During manufacture carbide slurry is dried by spray drying to a powder form. Afterwards the spray dryer vessel must be thoroughly cleaned to remove any remaining deposits and prevent contamination between batches of different material grades. Initially production personnel were lowered into the vessel to use handheld cleaning lances, which was time consuming and potentially unsafe.

The Hughes turnkey system solution comprises a high pressure pumpset, high pressure stainless steel ring main, with an automatic three dimensional cleaning head that is raised and lowered into the vessel via a high pressure hose and pneumatic hose reel. The tank cleaning head rotates in two planes by the reaction of the water jets to bring about total cleaning coverage of the complete vessel in 30-60min, depending on the degree of deposits present.