Manchester 'Adblue' plant handles urea challenge

Manchester, UK – Multisol Ltd, based in Manchester, manufactures a urea solution, commonly referred to as ‘Adblue’, which is required by trucks with selective catalytic reduction equipment, to reduce NOx levels in exhaust gases.

‘Adblue’ is manufactured by dissolving urea prills into a pre-heated, high purity water source. The urea prills are delivered to Multisol in bulk bags, which require an effective discharger system.

For this task, Multisol employs combination of a bulk bag discharger and flexible screw conveyor – both from Spiroflow – to unload the bulk bags and deliver the urea prills to the inlet on top of the dissolver tank.

The bulk bag discharger has an integral lifting hoist. 14 bags of urea prills are used per batch taking around ten minutes per bag to discharge. The prills are then conveyed to the top of the dissolver tank by a 17 meter long ‘Spiroflow’ Flexible Screw Conveyor inclined at 45°.

The outlet of the conveyor has an integral slide valve and fan arrangement that prevents ingress of moisture into the conveyor from the warm water in the dissolving tank.

The bulk bag discharger incorporates side and base bag massagers to deal with agglomerated prills. In addition, bag spout clamps only allow product discharge after the containment doors are close to obviate exposure of operators to dust hazards.

During the latter part of 2011, additional, and more powerful, bag massagers were fitted to the discharger to cope with bags of prills being received in even more consolidated a condition.