Chute Technologies technology packages – employing technologies developed from proven installations in alumina, iron and other mineral ores and coal handling facilities at mines, energy plants and ports – tackle dust problems at their source rather than attempt to control dust after it has been created and dispersed into the atmosphere.

The same technologies can be applied to inlet, hood, chute, spoon, enclosure and saturation zones to address widespread spillage hazards, with their cost, downtime and safety issues, said Chute Technologies engineer Dennis Pomfret.

“Good designs such as these – either new or retrofitted – demonstrate that environmentally sensitive production need not necessarily come at a cost to output,” he said.

“In fact, these chute improvement technologies have achieved major increases in production, exceeding 50% and even 80% in some cases, while solving waste and spillage problems.”

Chute Technologies’ packages have unified technologies that address dust and spillage issues and combined them into problem-solving packages that combine integrated advanced product flow analysis; 3D discrete element method (DEM) design processes; and globally proven manufacturing services.

“The packages – which apply to completely new plants and problem areas within existing plants – deploy technologies whose availability and application may have been too fragmented or unmanageable and put into the too-hard basket,” Pomfret said.

“But now the environmental safety and profit waste issues raised by dust and spillage have placed these issues high on the industry agendas worldwide.”