Giant blast-room installed

The room measures 30m long x 8m wide x 8m high and can accept loads to 40t. Double doors at one end provide a 7 x 7m opening. Walls and roof are constructed from prefabricated mild steel panels covered with full-height rubber curtains, while the concrete floor is protected with steel plate to retain a smooth, safe surface. Two personnel doors have been fitted and are interlocked with the blasting system to prevent it being used if one is open.

Abrasive is recovered by means of a sweep-in hopper, a bucket elevator and a cleaner/separator that delivers clean graded material to a 10t-capacity hopper designed to feed up to four blast machines and allow about 10 hours of blasting.

The cleaner/separator removes fines, dust and over-size contaminants, which are then delivered automatically to bins for disposal. The equipment can be adjusted to ensure only suitable abrasive is re-used.

The use of a sweep-in hopper has avoided the cost and disruption of civil engineering work. Hodge Clemco also reduced costs by designing the room to integrate with the customer’s own dust extraction, air supply and dust collection equipment.

The same abrasive recovery system was retro-fitted by Hodge Clemco to an existing blast room at the premises. Both installations have self-contained control systems that include isolator switches, interlocked stop/start buttons, indicator lamps and automatic cut-outs when storage hoppers are full. The systems can be purged quickly, if the type of abrasive being used needs to be changed.