On March 24, the technology center of Huanghua Port wrapped up its study of the technology of automatic feeding by car dumpers and submitted a research report. After monitoring the No. 4 car dumper for four months in a row, the research team found that the technology saves close to seven minutes compared with dumping operated manually. The technology has met the technical requirements of the project.
Currently, the port uses radar sensor and mercury switch to detect hoppers and bins locations. The car dumpers may not dump materials accurately due to instability in continuous feeding, high failure rate of the switch, detection inaccuracy when the bin level is too low, and detection delay of the conveyor belt. To solve these problems, the port’s technology center made intensive study on many key technologies including reliable detection for hoppers and bins location, detection system for bin level, intelligent feeding, auto-correction system for materials volume on the conveyor, hook-finding and auto-correction for the location wagon, anti-interference for car dumpers, and last-vehicle detection for the location wagon with No.4 car dumper as the research subject. It then established a new set of car dumper feeding system.
After continuous operation tests, the system is capable of feeding materials automatically. In operation, it can balance the location of five hoppers in a dynamic manner, the average feeding efficiency is improved compared with manual operation, and it also reduces the workload of operation workers.
