New control platform developed for soil remediation

New technology for soil remediation has been developed in the shape of a mobile control platform.

Eco-Warrior is a soil remediation machine built by Adelaide company Broons Engineering for UK company SoilXchange, which takes waste soil and mixes it with additives such as lime, cement, water or biological reactants to produce a product at the other end which has certain geotechnical or other improved properties.

The mobile platform has been designed to fit in a custom-built semi-trailer platform, allowing it to operate on site or in a depot with soil brought to it for processing. It consists of an infeed conveyor, inline belt weigher, additive hopper on load cells with rotary vane feeder, water sprays, mixing chamber and discharge conveyor.

According to APCI managing director, Anthony Dally, the designers spent a great deal of time ensuring that the equipment met all customer requirements, which included price specifications.

He said: "Setpoints to operate the machine are entered via the HMI interface. As soil is loaded onto the infeed conveyor the infeed conveyor moves the soil forward over an inline weigh cell which measures the tonnes/hour and volume/hour of material entering the machine.

"Water dosing is PID controlled with a modulating valve and fixed speed pumps fed from a tank to achieve the correct flow rates. Additive dosing is done by the hopper which is fitted with a speed controlled hydraulically powered rotary vane feeder, load cells to measure the weight of material in the hopper, air fluidisers to keep the material flowing and air hammers to break additive bridges."

There are many features of the new technology that could not be incorporated in off-the-shelf equipment. David Rogers, the SHS director, said that one of the main objectives during construction was to deliver power for the primary drives with the highest possible efficiency in order to keep fuel consumption to a minimum.

Posted by Joseph Hutton