Bag Dump Stations
Volkmann offers a comprehensive range of bag dump (product loading and unloading) stations, drum tip stations and minor additive hoppers – all optimized for dust-free operation when used in conjunction with vacuum conveyors. These stations include:
- Bag feeding stations
- Drum emptying systems
- Material unloading from drums and bags under high containment conditions OEB 4 and OEB 5
- Customized hoppers, material receivers, collectors, sending stations and docking systems
With Volkmann Bag Dump Stations, products such as powder, dust and granulated material can be discharged directly from barrels, drums, bags, special bins and containers, even with plastic liners. Volkmann stations include practical solutions used in simple “minors addition” or the regular opening and transfer of production batches of product, from 25 or 50 lb. bags, with or without containment. There is a solution for just about every situation that is likely to be encountered in the product environment, from simple to complex to highly contained and custom designed. From fume silica to tungsten metal powder our extensive experience over 40 years of manufacturing provides the right solution for your application.
Combine these units with process control systems and integrate remote controls or monitoring systems. All levels, alarms and error messages as well as other required information, can be transmitted by an interface for evaluation and monitoring.
Volkmann Bag Dump Stations Offer:
- Dust-free material handling
- Product aspiration and loading with full control
- A safe way to avoid the difficult manual handling of all types of bulk materials packed in drums/containers
- Minimized health risks in the workplace
- Protection of the environment from hazardous materials
- Increased quality of your final products and the working environment
Volkmann Bag Dump Stations Features Include:
- Modular design allowing features to be selected to suit the application
- The ability to add upgrades to suit more demanding applications to a simple station
- Robust simple construction that allows cleaning between batches without the need for tools
- Explosion-proof ATEX certified design as standard
- 316L contact parts as standard
- Integrated dust hoods and filters, or central air hook-up as required
- Reverse jet filter cleaning
- Glovebox options for containment
- Hepa filtration options
- High containment options
- Inlet conveyor for bags with an isolation valve
- Empty bag discharge chute or a pneumatic bag compactor
- Discharge aids to suit the application
- Integrated Lumpbreaker options
- Integrated Drum Tipper options for drum emptying
- Custom dimensioned units to suit the application
- Sanitary connection to downstream vacuum transfer
- Roll in – roll out design to allow connection for Bulk Bag Unloader gravity feed
- Handling materials with bulk densities from as low as 3 lbs./ft3 and as high as 400 lbs./ft3
- Inert options as required
Our modular design allows individual features to be added or removed to suit the customer specific requirements
From simple to complex designs, from open hopper to high containment – a solution exists for every application
Bag Dump Stations
Volkmann offers an extensive range of product loading stations and bag dump stations for bagged materials. Systems with a variety of filling volumes available, from mini (1 ft3) to maxi (> 15 ft3).
All stations are designed and manufactured by Volkmann in Germany. All parts with product contact are made of stainless steel 316L (1.4404).
The stations are available with various functional modules:
- Shelf for easy bag handling
- Robust grill above the hopper section to place and empty bags
- Optional screen to prevent contamination with larger material pieces (e.g. protection against paper or plastic pieces cut off opening the bag)
- Dust hood with door to close off the system
- Integrated aspiration, filtration and dust recovery system
- Filling volume extension
- Material agitators and fluidizers to assist discharge
- Material lump breakers and de-agglomeration units
Systems can run under inert gas if required for quality or safety reasons upon request.
Bag Loading Weighing Station
The RNT 180, Volkmann’s modified bag loading weighing station makes it possible to safely and reliably introduce a pre-weighed quantity/product batch into production processes such as mixing or blending. By utilizing the unloader’s built-in weighing system, various ingredients can be pre-weighed and loaded into the station before use. As soon as required, the whole load can be easily transferred into the process by vacuum conveying The RNT hopper is mechanically isolated to allow accurate weighing. Vacuum transfer of materials ensures minimal dust is generated during loading.
Containment Material Unloading Station (RNT-CON)
High quality, high potency powders and fines require dust-free material handling. Volkmann’s contained Rip-and-Tip dump station allows the opening and discharging of materials from bags, boxes and small containers completely free of dust and contamination. With the RNT-CON, critical powder handling processes are made safe in the ever more demanding processing environment. The RNT-CON’s modular design of its product feeding station, enables a flexible design with various functional units and options. Bags or containers are fed semi-automatically into the isolator via a roller conveyor (loading through containment gate optional). They enter a dust lock section and subsequent negative pressure unloading chamber. Inside the glove box isolator, they are opened manually and discharged into the feeding hopper for transfer by the vacuum conveyor.
Optional Hepa filters, Lump breakers/crushers and material agitators are available. If required, the closed station can be flushed from within using a hand washing gun or WIP/CIP. The illustration at left shows a high containment station with a no-tip unloader as well as push-push Hepa filtration and WIP/CIP.
Options:
- Flushing connection with washing-gun or spray balls
- Continuous Multijector de-dusting and filtration
- Door lock, operated by foot pedal
- Inlet tunnel, optional built as a lock with separate aspiration
- Dust protection, optional second pneumatic door lock
- Roller Conveyor for bags, optional with bag separation, optional with vacuum lifting hoist and extended buffer zone
- Material discharge with lump breaker, with connection for vacuum conveying
- Modular connection to bring out the emptied bags, either with bag compactor, endless liner etc.
- Optional push-push Hepa filtration and OEB4, OEB5 containment
Volkmann Empty Sack Compactor – an emptying station for bagged goods
An empty sack compactor, with a dust-free connection to the product loading station and sharing its integrated dust extraction, is now available to supplement the line of VOLKMANN Rip and Tip (RNT) Loading Stations.
With this compactor, the emptied containers/sacks are collected in a polybag and mechanically compacted. Depending on the container size, the collection volume of the empty sack compactor is sufficient for Circa (approximately 40 to 100 bags depending on size and thickness of the bag) . The product loading station and empty sack compactor are entirely made of stainless steel and completely manufactured by VOLKMANN. Custom systems are available.
Drum Discharge Systems
Volkmann systems for discharging bulk material from drums either work by tilting and emptying the barrels into a material sending station or by an automatic guided suction lance, aptly named the “No-Tip Unloader”. Feeding the lance may also be performed manually.
Special secondary/feeding air systems take material from barrels with liners or directly from sacks. These systems provide an extremely gentle material transport from the barrel and work successfully with sensitive and easy to damage tablets. They do so by monitoring and regulating the suction air flow to avoid greater pressure on sensitive bulk goods, which can occur with tilting systems. The system also allows the discharge of material from drums with liners under full containment to work in a closed system under controlled environmental conditions.
IBC Docking And Discharge Stations
Volkmann docking and discharge stations provide a dust-free and quickly connectable joint between frequently exchanged IBCs and other process equipment:
- Docking of IBCs at filling and discharging stations
- Docking of Vacuum Conveyors safely and dust-free with mobile hoists directly on top of filling machines, tablet presses etc.