Flow Measurement for Sand Quarry

Flow measurement for sand production quarry.

Bathgate Silica Sand is one of the largest producers of high-quality sand, top dressing, and root zone mixes throughout the UK and provides sand production for the equestrian, leisure, industrial, foundry, and play sand markets.

The customer was looking for help with monitoring flow at various points across their plant, to maximize the efficiency of their process and minimize energy and maintenance costs. The site at Bathgate Silica has a sand quarry where raw sand is excavated into an industrial plant and then classified into a finalized product. Sand slurry, which is a mixture of sand and water, is pumped from the quarry to the industrial plant to be dewatered and classified - because of this, PDFM 5.1 was the ideal solution.

The PDFM 5.1 is ideal for monitoring and troubleshooting flow in full pipes and works perfectly on applications that contain bubbles or suspended particles, as it uses doppler technology, that reflect off bubble or particles in the liquid to measure velocity. The portability of the product was perfect as the flow meter was used to test flow on six different pipes, all at different points in the process. The clamp-on sensors meant there was no need to cut into the pipe or shut down flow for installation.

The unit provided stable, accurate results on all the pipes. For four of the pipes, the equipment works immediately, however, on two of the pipes there was an additional step required before measurements could be taken. A fairly thick layer of rust and paint had to be removed from these two pipes with a grinder to expose the pipe metal s that the ultrasound could penetrate the pipe.

The customer was very happy with the equipment and clearly surprised by how easy and fast it was to use. They wanted to place an order right away and wouldn't let us leave the site without an order number.