Engineering
Filling hopper
What if you want to automate the filling of containers to a specific weight? That was the goal of the project for one of our clients in the petrochemical industry in Antwerp. The result was an automated filling hopper installation, a tower that serves as a hopper to fill containers (bins) with used, contaminated catalyst from a reactor.
Operation
The tower itself is composed of three separate hoppers: a filling hopper, a weighing bunker, and a discharge hopper.
The filling hopper, with a volume of several bins, is continuously refilled using a crane with a clamping bucket. This hopper fills the weighing bunker until it reaches a weight of 1500 kg by opening a valve at the bottom.
The weighing bunker is equipped with a weighing system and communicates with the filling hopper to indicate when to close the valve to approach the target weight of 1500 kg as closely as possible. Additionally, the weighing bunker features a self-learning system. Since closing the filling hopper takes several seconds, the system learns from each fill cycle and improves its accuracy in determining when to start closing the filling hopper to achieve the desired weight. This allows the system to fill the bins up to 1500 kg with an accuracy of up to 5 kg.
Once the weighing bunker contains 1500 kg and the filling hopper is closed, the weighing bunker opens, allowing the catalyst to fall into the discharge hopper. The discharge hopper then guides the catalyst neatly into the bin.
