Professional Articles

Ship Loading and Unloading

High Capacity Unloading - A new Discharge System for Self-unloading Ships

This article introduces a new type of pneumatic unloading system for self-unloading ships and presents a comparison with existing systems. The new unloading system uses a large-volume pressure vessel in each cargo hold which is filled via a screw arranged in the vessel itself and which conveys out of the cargo hold directly to the storage silo located ashore, without transfer points. Several of these senders are connected with each other in such manner that a quasi-continuous unloading takes place: One sender is filled while an other conveys.
The new system is suitable for fine-grained bulk solids, such as e.g. cement. Compared with other conventional systems it is operated with two-stage compressors and is characterized by a clearly lower specific energy consumption at simultaneously higher unloading mass flows and considerably lower numbers of switching cycles of the discharge vessels. The structure of the new system will be described and discussed in detail.
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