Silo A – Additional Reclaim

Melbourne Cement Facility

MCF is a joint venture between Cement Australia and Independent Cement and Lime, servicing the supply of up to 80% of Victoria’s market for cementitious products from its Port Melbourne facility.  Increasing customer demand, fueled in part by Victoria’s elevated infrastructure spending, resulted in the need to explore options for increasing the loading rate for road bulk tankers at MCF’s existing site.

The Brief

A two-fold approach was required, with the decision taken to increase both the transfer rate from the main storage silos to the weighbridge dispatch facilities, as well as to construct an additional 40m weighbridge loading bay.  Between them, these projects presented two serious challenges;

  • How to execute both projects on the existing site, which dispatches over 2.5MT per year by road, with minimal disruption to truck loading operations
  • How to install and be able to maintain an additional high capacity cement transfer system into a very confined space underneath the existing concrete storage silo

Conventional means of pneumatically conveying cement were not possible given the space constraints.  Instead, a rotary feeder had to be used.  This type of device has limitations on permissible back pressure, so a low velocity, high efficiency ‘Fluidcon’ conveying system was selected.  Owing again to space constraints, a carefully designed dust collection system for the feeder was used, with the filter located outside of the silo which involved long horizontal suction runs.  The final installation and commissioning of this system was completed in January 2019, during an intense campaign over the low sales holiday period.  After achieving the design capacity of 120 TPH, only fine operational tuning remained.

 

Piling, civil construction and installation of the additional weighbridge was completed in March, 2019 with structural erection commencing early April.  Supply of a new load spout and feeding systems have been received on site and the new facility is due to be operational by mid 2019.  A bypass road was installed late 2018 to handle all of the exiting tanker traffic from the existing loading bays, which will enable safe and efficient construction of the new weighbridge facility.

How we helped

Feasibility studies

Feasibility estimates

Project Execution Plans

Detailed concept and layout designs

Procurement Management

Safety Management

Construction Management

Assessment and integration of maintenance requirements into final designs

Contracts administration, cost control, and scheduling

Commissioning

Outcome

At final completion, MCF will continue to efficiently service the growing demand for bulk product dispatch at its Port Melbourne facilities by:

  • Providing yet another weighbridge loading bay for cement as well as flyash
  • Doubling the cement transfer rate to top up the dispatch silos above the weighbridges.

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