Van Beek, Drunen, the Netherlands, reports that Dutch recycling specialist ARN has been successfully processing shredder waste from end-of-life vehicles in a new factory in Tiel since 2011. However, it was found that the Z pocket-belt elevators that had been installed at the time the factory was commissioned wore out much faster than anticipated and this resulted in huge maintenance costs, including frequent replacement of the conveyor belts. This problem has now been rectified since the belt conveyors were replaced by Van Beek screw conveyors.

 

Elsewhere in the factory Van Beek screw conveyors were already in use and ARN was very pleased with them, which is why Van Beek was one of the engineering firms that ARN approached to solve the problem. "Van Beek’s solution came out as the cheapest and best ", said Emil Bregita, head of technical service at ARN Recycling. Not many people are aware that vertical transport with a screw conveyor works extremely well. ARN had also been sceptical initially. When a trial vertical screw conveyor installation was shown to work satisfactorily, the first Z elevator was dismantled in 2014 and replaced by a screw conveyor. ARN was so pleased with it that in 2015 the remaining two Z elevators were replaced by screw conveyors. The ultimate result is that the factory now has much less downtime and a higher output. Despite the higher cost price of the screw conveyors, they paid for themselves  very quickly. www.van-beek.nl 

 

 

One of the newly installed Van Beek vertical screw conveyors