Arbor Forest Products, one of the UK’s leading suppliers of timber products to the building, DIY and construction trades, recently commissioned Dust Control Systems (DCS), to supply and install further dust extraction plant at its timber terminal on the Humber estuary in North Lincolnshire.
In addition to its already-impressive mill facility, which processes more than 35 million metres of timber a year, Arbor Forest Products has recently invested over £3m in a newly-built, state-of-the art, MDF moulding production facility. The high throughput manufacturing and finishing resource has been built to produce a comprehensive range of quality MDF moulded products.
To deal effectively with the high levels of MDF waste anticipated at the new facility, it was essential, from the outset, to make the best possible choice of filter type for the scheme. Dust Control Systems, a long-standing supplier of dust extraction plant to Arbor Forest Products, was called in to fully evaluate the extraction and waste handling needs. The scheme that DCS presented for the new plant centred round a Cattin Cyclonic type filter.
The new, externally-sited, dust extraction plant is designed to handle an overall air volume of 30,000 cubic meters per hour and to operate on a continuous basis. Waste is extracted from machines at source by a direct-drive 37kW main fanset which feeds the three meter diameter cyclo-filter. Waste collected by the filter is discharged via a rotary valve into a closed-loop conveying system, which feeds an adjacent 50m3 capacity storage silo. Alternatively, when required, waste can be diverted from the closed-loop conveying system for discharge direct to the boxcart.
Melvyn Bathgate, sales director at Dust Control Systems, explains: “We selected a Cattin Cyclo-filter for this installation because they’re the ideal choice when dealing with the heavy dust-laden air that’s generated when machining MDF. Cattin Cyclo-filters are highly efficient units which employ centrifugal force to separate around 95% of the extracted waste from the air stream, before the remaining particulate reaches a series of tubular filters. Furthermore, the compact Cyclo-filter has very few moving parts, resulting in little or no requirement for maintenance."
