Life is full of choices. Each choice is a compromise. Do we take the expressway to save 10 minutes of drive time or do we take the scenic route with the great view of the lake and the countryside? Do you buy the green car that is loaded and at a great price, or the silver car with less equipment because you love the color? Do we make our own hose assemblies at the plant to save some time and money, or do we have a distributor, with their expertise, make them for us?
Tony Haston has been with Dixon for 26 years. Beginning his career with the company as a territory sales manager, he currently works out of Houston as an energy market specialist. Dixon’s market specialists provide technical and industry expertise in focus areas such as energy, fire, and food and beverage / pharmaceutical.
The salesman from XYZ Hose received an email from one of his long-standing customers. He was smiling as he reviewed the order for more chemical hose assemblies, but the words “We’ve been going through these more quickly the last several months” suddenly gave him an unsettled feeling. With hopes of resolving the problem, he quickly emailed his customer, thanking him for the order and apologizing for not stopping by in almost a year. After setting up a meeting for the next week, he phoned in the details of the order to his office.
Extracting aluminum and refining it into a substance that another manufacturer can use as an aluminum part requires many steps. The raw material, bauxite, is fed into a separator tank also known as a digester. Inside the digester tank are a series of wires that resemble a spider web. These wires carry an electrical current that separates the aluminum ore from the rest of the material. This process is known as electrolysis. The residual matter ends up layered on the walls of the tank. Periodically, this clay-like substance needs to be removed from the walls of the digester; pneumatically powered chipping guns do the job. Removing this residue is hot, dirty and strenuous work.
If you’ve ever endured road construction (and who hasn’t) while making the daily work commute or during the family vacation trip, you may have noticed the construction workers creating quite a bit of dust while using tools that sound like machine guns. Congratulations—you’ve just encountered a pneumatic jackhammer.
One of the less reported sports stories of 2018 involved a marathon runner from Kenya named Eliud Kipchoge. Kipchoge has dominated the sport in recent years, and back in the fall he set a new world record in the marathon with a time of 2 hours, 1 minute, and 39 seconds. Similar to the four-minute mile barrier that nobody believed was possible until Roger Bannister eclipsed it in back in 1954, the two-hour marathon is a mythical number that until now, nobody thought was possible. Now it seems this incredible runner from Kenya has it within his sights. Maybe 2019 will be the year he breaks it!
There are many variables to take into consideration when selecting and designing a loading arm. The configuration, components, applications, measurements, media and site limitations, all must be taken into account for the design. Being able to work through this process in a clear concise manner will ensure that all these variables will be considered in the final build of your loading arm.
The process of making sugar from sugar cane has been around since before the birth of Jesus Christ. In many countries, sugar is still made the same way: The stalks are cut, the juice is extracted by ox-drawn crushers and then boiled to remove impurities, and finally it is evaporated to produce sugar crystals. Sugar was once a luxury item for the rich or presented only at special occasions. In the 1700s, sugar had another moniker: “white gold.” In today’s sugar processing plant, moving from sugar cane juice to the white crystals we see in the bowl on our kitchen table is done on a much grander scale. The equipment used in extraction, evaporation, boiling, centrifugal and, finally, packaging make this an amazingly quick journey. However, dangers are inherent to this automation, one in a most inconspicuous form: dust.
A customer’s truck pulled up to the hose shop and the shop leader went over to it to see what he needed. After a short conversation with the chemical plant driver, the shop leader motioned for another employee to come over. The shop leader explained that the customer’s hose had only been in service for a week and had gotten run over by a tanker truck. The hose was damaged, and it needed to be replaced, although the fittings were basically new, and the company had paid good money for them. He then told the employee to cut the fittings out of the hose, get the same style hose from stock, and put the customer’s existing fittings in the new hose. The shop leader instructed the employee to do it quickly, since the driver was going to wait.
Loading arms are becoming the standard choice over hoses for certain applications such as the transfer of liquids and dry materials in refineries, chemical plants, food & beverage processing plants, rail terminals and truck terminals. There are many variables involved in making the decision to purchase a loading arm. They can be based on application, material, location, site limitations, etc. Safety should always be considered first when protecting your most important asset, your employees. Is a loading arm actually a safer option than a standard hose assembly? Let’s dive into a few scenarios and examine the impact on safety.