A comprehensive predictive maintenance solution for conveyors and bucket elevators for bulk materials handling – by CICSA®

Phil Black - PII Editor 24/01/2023

299 2 minutes read

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Cicsa chain bucket elevator — Example of CICSA chain bucket elevator with measuring sensors

Materials handling, especially for bulk solids, frequently relies on the use of conveyors and bucket elevators powered by mechanical chains of different type to allow for the transport of materials through buckets, scrapers or other accessories. Due to variable operating conditions and progressive wear and tear, the chain equipment requires periodical checking to verify issues of elongation caused by surface abrasion, as well as monitoring against possible overloading.

Plant operators know that periodical manual inspections of the chain equipment are needed to measure and monitor the chain conditions and allow planning the equipment substitution. However, such inspections are time-consuming, require skilled operators to carry out meaningful measurements, imply significant frequency and downtime of the machines; they may involve non-negligible safety risks (e.g. contact with moving parts, exposition to the transported material, environment contamination) and require proper ‘post-processing’ in data analysis and elaboration to avoid wrong interpretation and unnecessary or too late substitutions.

CICSA R&D designed a disruptive solution (*) for a comprehensive predictive maintenance system, solving such issues and allowing the automated measurement and tracking of the wear and tear status as well as the mechanical loading conditions of the chain equipment of any type of bucket elevator and conveyor (whether it’s equipped with mechanical chains with pin & bushes, or central chains, or round steel link chains, etc.).

The solution allows to move toward condition-based predictive maintenance through insights from operational data and analytics, enabling a more efficient use of existing assets.

The system works through specially designed smart links equipped with unique sensors strategically installed along the machine length, dialoguing with an IoT Box. Leveraging a dedicated cloud-based platform and through smart proprietary algorithms, real-time data signals are continuously measured, analysed, processed and stored, becoming accessible from anywhere in the world via the internet, 24/7.

Thanks to automated data analysis the platform allows to:

Perform a real-time monitoring, at distance, of the wearing status and the mechanical loading condition of bucket elevators and chain conveyors
Build up a database of the measurements and store information, forecasting machine behaviour at different operating sites and conditions
Perform a truly predictive maintenance, effectively optimizing the schedule of spares replacement
Reduce unplanned downtime and risks of asset failure and breakdowns
Improve the reliability and availability of assets
Reduce the need for manual inspections, and related safety risks and downtime

* International patent pending. This solution has been developed with support of the TECH FAST LOMBARDIA programme of Lombardy Region, project “Digital Maintenance” CUP E59J21009770007

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