Meticulous planning pays dividends for DUSTRACTION at GP CASES

When Dave Waldron, MD of GP Cases Ltd. in Wiltshire, began researching new dust extraction for their wooden packaging business to upgrade an old and “rather tired” system at their 20,000 sq. ft. factory in Royal Wootton Bassett, they knew they needed specialist help. They had been running the old, labour-intensive layout for years and towards the end of 2015 wanted to combine a new dust filter and extractor with the installation of a biomass heating system. Dustraction So Steve Matuska made a number of visits from Dustraction to assess the requirements on a site where dust extraction and waste wood fuel needed to be chipped, integrated and conveyed into a purpose built storage silo to feed the biomass boiler manufactured and supplied by Wood Waste Technology. Heat is generated from wood fuel and used to supply hot water to radiators throughout the factory buildings and offices. “The old extraction system was inefficient and very labour intensive,” says David Waldron. “Filtered waste was discharged into plastic bags which, as they were filled, were taken off outflows manually, the bags replaced and the waste then taken outside to a skip for dumping to landfill. This, together with the disposal of offcuts, represented at least five man-hours per week so the new automatic layout brings a significant reduction in man power that can now be redeployed more productively”. Waste is now converted into fuel by a chipper and transported along Dustraction’s ductwork runs to their filter system and up the inclined conveyor to a new purpose-built storage silo. GP Cases Is a successful family business which has been based in Royal Wootton Bassett for the last 50 Years. Dustraction replaced all ducting mains throughout the GP Cases factory for the fully automatic transportation of dust and wood-chip fuel from all existing drops serving band, panel and cross-cut saws, plus the range of timber-dimensioning machinery in use at any one time, and transporting waste via noise reductive, aerodynamically designed branch ducts on tapered sections. Steve Matuska reports that a new fully-sequenced control panel services around a dozen individual machines via fully enclosed fans on anti-vibration mounts, using flexible isolation sleeves and outlet attenuators to reduce break-out noise to an absolute minimum. A No. 27 RV four-section modular filter by Dustraction is mounted on a steelwork support gantry and discharges all waste via a Dustrax No. 33 floor-mounted, heavy-duty fanset to an inclined conveyor and an externally mounted silo that is now also feeding a new biomass boiler by Wood Waste Technology fully automatically. This is the latest 199kW boiler which generates 92.4% heat from fuel waste burned compared with 68% by Wood Waste Technology’s 150kW model that it supersedes. Dustraction’s filter system comprises more than 1,000 sq ft of cloth with a filtration velocity of around 2.38m/min and an automatic shaker system which is designed for periodic removal of cake dust from the filter areas during manufacturing and also on shut-down. “I must give all credit to the men from Dustraction for their help, expertise and sensitivity in providing us with what is to us a revolutionary new extraction and conveyor system,” says David Waldron. The was a difficult job for various reasons, Steve Matuska added, but the planning and attention to detail was meticulous from the outset and that made a major difference when it came to the Installation. “We had very little margin for error because of constraints on height and length but it all came together in the end; we are very pleased with the new system.