It seems obvious that conveying powders and other bulk materials in a straight line delivers far more efficiency than routing around curves. But nearly every time we’re asked to design a powder conveying system, we need to navigate around the constraints of a building that wasn’t originally designed for today’s manufacturing processes, and certainly not designed to promote peak conveying efficiency. Low ceilings, columns, legacy machinery that cannot be moved, outdated technology infrastructure, and other immovable obstacles create challenges that often make rigid conveyor options such as belt conveyors and screw conveyors unworkable. Since our pneumatic vacuum conveyors offer the design flexibility to accommodate complex routings, our engineering team typically resolves these situations with ease. But physical obstacles that require complex routings can also add to the cost.

Wouldn’t it be easier to start from scratch in a new building?

Bulk Material Handling in a New Building

Multinational manufacturing giants such as Kraft Heinz, Mars, Tesla, Intel, Samsung, and Panasonic recently scored headlines announcing multibillion-dollar investments in new mega-plants and facility expansions within the USA. It’s unlikely the architectural firms designing these buildings are paying close attention to how salt and pasta are transferred into the macaroni and cheese production process, but they would be wise to consider how ceiling heights, doorways, and physical infrastructure directly affect how efficiently materials and ingredients can be moved from storage into a process. Designing from a clean slate offers the rare opportunity to design the production process for peak efficiency, throughput, and worker safety.

Consider the ceiling height, for example. Many aging industrial facilities were built with nine-foot-tall ceilings or lower. Process engineers typically specify conveying, filling, and packaging equipment to use all nine feet of available space, and when new technology and equipment become available to improve the process, it often cannot fit due to the tight height constraints. We hear this occasionally from pharmaceutical engineers who want to use our pneumatic vacuum conveyors to transfer powders into tablet presses and from packaging engineers who want to use our automated ingredient handling systems to transfer nuts, candies, seeds, and other products up and into vertical form fill seal machines. These are ideal applications for our conveyors proven effective over and over again all over the world for decades, but the vacuum conveyor needs at least four feet of clearance to fit above the receiving hopper feeding the machine. Our engineers can always design a workaround but we’re talking about achieving peak efficiency.

If local building codes permit higher ceilings, we’d certainly recommend building taller, not only to neatly accommodate the installation of our automated conveyors above tall, vertically oriented machines but also to leave room for any process innovations that may become available in the future. And let’s apply the same concept to doorways. Standard, seven-foot doorways create unnecessary difficulties when installing industrial equipment or trying to move material about the plant. Tall, wide doorways translate to a safe production environment that is easier to run with efficiency.

Compressed Air Conveying Instead of Electricity

One of the key reasons Volkmann vacuum conveyors earned the ATEX certification as explosion-proof by design and may be operated in many hazardous locations is that they run on compressed air – not on electricity. Belt conveyors, screw conveyors, and other mechanical conveying approaches rely on electricity that can generate sparks. This Volkmann advantage eliminates the potential for dangerous electrical discharge and makes it safer to work with ignitable powders without risk of combustible dust explosions.

However, it also requires access to compressed air and not every facility was built for compressed air production. When working with an existing facility, retrofitting for on-demand compressed air may not fit into the footprint or the building infrastructure. But when designing a new processing line for a new plant, it’s easy to account for the compressor, piping, storage tanks, power requirements, ventilation, and other equipment to ensure pneumatic conveyors receive clean, dry air at the correct pressure and flow rate – and to deliver it exactly where the conveying systems are to operate.

Easy Machine Access for Cleaning and Maintenance

Sam Walton famously avoided building a spacious Wal-Mart headquarters despite the company’s meteoric growth, reasoning people would use all available space regardless of how much or how little space is available, just like a gas expands to fill the size of the container. This may be a perspective the food, chemical, pharmaceutical, additive manufacturing, and other companies investing billions for spacious, new plants need to consider. Especially in rural areas, where many of these plants are being constructed, square footage is readily available at a reasonable cost. It’s natural to build based on anticipated growth and fill seemingly unused space in the production area with equipment for unplanned secondary operations or for storing and staging materials and ingredients. When designing a new production area, it’s important to design open spaces into the floorplan and protect them from the gradual encroachment of equipment creep. These open spaces ensure the safe, easy access to pneumatic vacuum conveyor parts and other equipment that is needed to promote fast maintenance, complete cleaning, and confident visual inspections.

In fact, our customers often cite quick disassembly without tools as one of the most valuable features of our conveyors. This invites full access for cleaning, and after return to service, they can transfer a different product without concern for cross-contamination, all in a matter of minutes.

When companies like Kraft Heinz, Tesla, or Mars invest billions in new facilities, the focus often centers on production capacity, automation, and cost. Designing these plants with automated powder conveying systems in mind at the outset supports higher throughput, improved efficiency, and reduced operating costs — delivering measurable returns from day one and lasting returns for decades to come.

Designing a processing line in a new building? Or struggling to boost throughput in an aging facility? The Volkmann engineering team is ready to help – contact us here.