Edge trim rotary valve
Recycling waste materials generated from production processes is becoming more and more important in driving down production costs and saving money on unnecessary raw materials. The UK’s leading plasterboard manufacturer were looking to recycle some of their materials that were ‘trimmed’ from their finished product and approached MID for advice on the best type of equipment that could help them achieve this.
Eliminating waste and increasing production efficiencies are paramount in today’s fiercely competitive manufacturing markets and the UK’s leading manufacturer of plasterboard and building products approached MID to assist with a project to recycle previously wasted materials, that are ‘trimmed’ from their plasterboard finished product. Not only does this save on raw materials and increase yield, it also eliminates the need to pay for waste to be buried in costly landfill sites.
Quite simply they needed a valve that could handle the different shapes and sizes of plasterboard trimmings to enable them to be conveyed to an area that would separate and then regrind the material, allowing it to be reintroduced to an earlier point to be reprocessed. The material, consisting of paper and dry plaster board was incredibly abrasive and had a broad spread of shapes and sizes.
MID recommended one of our Waste Handling Rotary Valves, specifically designed to handle materials with uneven shapes and sizes. With a carbon steel rotor and spring steel tips, the larger pieces of plasterboard would either break up or pass through the valve by ‘squeezing past’ the spring steel tips leaving them to spring back into position once cleared.
In addition to this, we incorporated an automatic mechanical drive clutch mechanism to ensure that in the unlikely event that a large piece of material did manage to jam the valve, the drive would be momentarily disengaged and then re-engaged seconds later to dislodge the material in question.
Due to the abrasiveness of the material being handled, sealing the rotor shaft with the traditional gland packing arrangement would have only provided a short respite before needing to be repacked or retightened so for a maintenance free solution we fitted our renowned mechanical shaft seals that will, in most cases, outlast the valve itself.