The Situation
A large chemical plant, producing titanium chemicals, was experiencing serious issues with the performance of their drive train. The specific application was a hot oil evacuation that had previously caused fires leading to injuries, downtime, and investigations from the HSE. The root cause of the failures was the overloading of the zirconium ball mills with too much titanium oxide powder, leading to coupling failure and in-turn, the hazardous spillages.
The Solution
The near-constant failures were a real cause for concern, as were the hazards that arose from them. The HAYLEY DEXIS local branch team were contacted, who immediately arranged to visit the site alongside a specialist drives and couplings third party. A highly-innovative MagnaDriveTM magnetic coupling solution was recommended, with a slight adjustment to the current configuration to enable a true ‘dropin’ solution. This involved mounting a belt pulley between two pillar block bearings on a small-length jack shaft, which was driven by the MagnaDriveTM couplings mounted on the motor shaft.
"OPERATIONAL DOWNTIME AND ITS IMPACT UPON REVENUE HAS BEEN DRAMATICALLY REDUCED."
The Result
The MagnaDriveTM solution has provided the customer with a soft-start capability and the overload protection that the application had been calling for. Thanks to these new capabilities, the danger of burn injuries for staff working around machinery and the consequences of forced operational downtime on the production and revenue of the business, have been dramatically reduced. Following an initial order of two units, the customer has since replicated the MagnaDriveTM solution eight more times across its facility.