Belgian metals plant meets emissions deadline, just

London - The Umicore precious metals refinery in Hoboken, Belgium, teamed up with two James Walker companies - James Walker Benelux and UK-based James Walker Townson - to meet an extremely tight deadlines for complyign with new low-emissions legislation. The project involved the custom-design and installation of five ductwork compensators.

Plant engineers had redesigned parts of the process to meet new low-emissions legislation and the installation had to be complete in just four weeks during an environmentally led plant shutdown. JW Townson tailor-produced the Comflex compensators in the UK in time for Antwerp office’s site team to fit all the equipment in just over a week. Precious metal refining started again the next morning, on schedule, with the important low-emissions plant in action.

Four of the ductwork compensators were 1200mm inside diameter by 200mm length, of which three were made from 6mm fluorocarbon and the other was a rubber-proofed fabric compensator designed to resist temperatures up to 300°C. The fifth unit was 600mm i/d and is also 200mm long and rubber-proofed fabric. Metal inner sleeve deflectors were supplied for the compensators along with 1mm thick counter-flanges.