As many cement plants will testify, cleaning cement and raw meal silos can be a dangerous, time consuming, costly and tricky job. Nowadays, most cement plants try to emphasize and enforce stringent safety policies. A demand for SAFE silo cleaning has long been overdue.
 
Despite a growing awareness that safety is a major factor when performing a silo cleaning task, there are still cases whereby cement plants have chosen to ignore the huge risks involved in undertaking such activities. In some instances, the danger posed to workers is so serious that innocent lives have been lost.  With that in mind, cement plants must recognise that silo cleaning is a highly professional job that needs to be performed by qualified specialists who are able to minimise the exposure to risks posed to human lives, by incorporating skill, experience and technology.

In many cases, the discharge area of the silo provides one of the biggest challenges in silo cleaning. Loose material has to be removed from the silo first and huge lumps of hardened cement are commonly found blocking the passageway during the extraction of material from the silo. In the past, the only available solution was to either pump compressed air through an improvised opening at the discharge gate, or by completely removing the discharge chutes itself. However, neither method has been proven to be effective or efficient.

• Cement
• Sugar
• Powder

• Gypsum
• Animal Feed
• Dust

• Grain
• Coal
• Ash

• Flour
• Fertilizer
• Aluminum

• Maize
• Catalyst
• Zinc

• Soybean
• Ore
• Lime

The scope of our silo cleaning service and training program, outlines essential details such as:

• Silo and material inspection

• Assessment of existing openings in the silo

• Silo cleaning and blockage clearing procedure

• Silo build-up causes and prevention

• Material recovery and minimize material loss or wastage

• Confined space techniques

• Silo evacuation procedure

• Safety and risk assessment

• Silo cleaning and blockage clearing techniques using silo whips & Cardox

What is Cardox?

Cardox is a versatile equipment that is used in a diversity of industries as an effective solution for the removal build-up, blockage clearing, unclogging harden materials as well as in rock excavation.

Cardox consists of a high-strength reusable steel tube filled with liquid carbon dioxide (CO2) that is energized with a small electrical charge. Expanding up to 600 times the original volume, the CO2 is released through a discharge nozzle, creating a powerful pushing force reaching pressures up to 27,000 & 34,000 psi. More than three tons of blockages can be dislodged by a single blast in milliseconds.

What are silo whips?

Silo whips are either powered by air or hydraulics and controlled from the top of and outside the Silo, which eliminates the need for people to enter the silo. With Health and Safety in mind, this method is the a safe alternative when performing silo cleaning without entering the silo.

The whipping head is suspended inside the silo, but operated remotely from the silo top, the silo whip efficiently clears build-up using an air-driven or hydraulic rotary cutter, with a 360 degree rotation and an operating depth of up to 50 meters. A range of cutters are used depending on the type of material to be cleaned. Cleared material simply falls to the base of the silo for extraction.