Products and Services

Products and Services

Products and Services

StallFlow Transfer Chute Technology

Generation Next.

Significantly reduce your transfer chute maintenance and at the same time significantly improve transfer chute reliability and productivity. That's Gulf StallFlow Technology. Better design and thinking provides the next 'step' change improvements required to generate incremental production increases from materials handling conveyor assets by identifying and eliminating bottlenecks.

Gulf's proven StallFlow Transfer Chute.

Gulf's StallFlow Transfer Chute is key to bringing a new way of thinking when it comes to transfer chute design with a significant list of key improvements:

• The transfer chute are designed to handle a range of ores from cohesive, adhesives fines through to large lumps or combinations of both, without blocking, in a totally reliable manner
• The transfer chute will carry the full capacity of the delivery belt without blocking
• The transfer chute relies on a controlled build-up of ore within the transfer to create a stable flow surface that in turn absolutely minimises wear within the transfer
• The transfer chute always loads centrally with no flow bias hence eliminating any tracking issues that can be caused by some transfers
• The transfer chute loads with a good surcharge angle ensuring maximum system capacity without spillage and with minimal dust generation.

Gulf's patented StallFlow Technology design also:

• Eliminates the need for hard faced skirt systems
• Eliminates the need for impact idlers
• Is designed so that any part of the transfer chute that may require maintenance over time can be easily changed out as a rotatable component making maintenance quick and easy to perform
• Any maintenance can be done from outside of the transfer thus eliminating time consuming confined space procedures
• Extends belt life as it always soft loads with minimal material boil and no entrapping of ore along the skirt lines.

Extreme conditions countered by extremely good design thinking.

The design of Gulf transfers chute is based on designing to extremes, with an industry leading understanding of how sub (-) 1mm material flows. The significance of -1mm material is that this is where the surface interactional forces start dominating the way the material flows and behaves as against the physical properties of the ore.

Right down into the sticky nitty-gritty.

Typically known as wet, sticky clay ore, the -200 micron material and more likely -20 micron all contain water. How these size fractions interact (cohesive, adhesive forces) and achieving a balance between ensuring that we can control the flow of the product without blocking the transfer chute, can only be achieved in transfer chute design by understanding and being able to simulate, through empirical testing, these interactions. That's our specialty at Gulf.

Reduce costs and increase production with Gulf StallFlow Technology.

Sites managing cohesive ores have utilised this transfer chute technology to significantly increase production while at the same time greatly reducing operating and maintenance costs.

Key links:

• Getting the transfer chute trajectory right
• Transfer ChuteFlow Control
• Getting the Transfer Chute presentation right

Chutes – A Brief History

The fixed ideas of the past

In the 30 years of transfer chute development everyone has developed fixed ideas. Essentially high volume conveyors originated from the grain industry and then moved into sized washed coal.

In terms of the way they worked, they were facile – uniform in size and the materials flowed predictably. Universities started looking at this information and started using models to design bins and hoppers and then developed their models for transfer chutes similarly. When the principles were applied to more complex materials we found that performance outcomes were seriously compromised.

It’s all way more technical than was thought.

Discrete Element Method software (DEM) was first applied to transfer chutes in the early 1990’s. The mathematical complexity of granular flow is extreme and DEM assumed many things. Today we seriously question and in fact substantially challenge many of these assumptions as being invalid. With DEM the design software of preference for transfers, this is a significant issue.

How right are the right angles?

For example, to design material handling transfer systems, historically we have developed and used two well tabulated angles: the surcharge angle (the angle the material sits up at on a conveyor belt) and the angle of repose (the angle it will sit up on in a static environment)

But the flow complexity of granular materials is much more complex and these angles can be totally irrelevant depending on the particular design. It’s design thinking based on unclear assumptions.

Today’s Gulf StallFlow Technology

At Gulf we looked at site problems and using reverse engineering, developed an improved understanding of granular flow mechanisms that led to the development of our StallFlow Technology. It takes on board many variables and looks at everything holistically, bringing about new and improved design thinking to all aspects including transfer chute design.

Maintenance Savings:

Conventional Transfer Chute verses Gulf Stallflow Transfer Chute

Cost Benefit Summary: significantly reduced maintenance, significantly reduced downtime, significantly increased production and reliability.