Complete redesign of shiploaders for Israel Ports Authority, ISRAEL, at the Ports of Eilat & Ashdod, included a new, elongated (80 t weight) boom; addition of long travel bogies, gantry structural reinforcement; new Cleveland Cascade Dust Suppressor telescopic dust suppression system. Drawings and strength and stability analysis per FEM and ISO were submitted to Lloyd’s Register of London and accepted without comment.
A special vessel loaders with a capacity of 1,200 tph is used for dust-free filling of loose material into lower holds of vessels with a dead weight up to 65,000 DWT.
Outwardly, the loader looks like a traveling bridge port crane, in which the regular loading boom is replaced with a 35-meter gallery carrying a belt conveyer along its central axis. A conveyor “head” is a movable structure that can be moved along the gallery by 11 meters. This allows unloading material from vessel board to board thus ensuring its full filling-in. In addition, the loader is provided by a mechanism that allows moving it along a vessel through rails.
Various modifications of such loaders differ in a capability to turn the gallery both horizontally and vertically. During the design stage, a special attention is given to the dust-free supply of loose material onto the loader, as well as to filling in the vessels’ low holds, because this process is actually dumping material down from high heights. For this purpose, special telescopic dust-absorbing hoses, filters, and special telescopic charging chutes of original Ring’s structure are used; they provide dust suction while vessels are loaded at various positions of the conveyor head.
