Marcellus Shale Fracking – Transloading Bulk Materials for Marcellus Shale Drilling

To be able to handle bulk sand railcar unloading, the right equipment must be on hand. This is unless you have a facility that allows for a truck to be placed under a hopper car. This is impractical in most cases, so the next best way is for a conveyor system to be used.

A portable conveyor is the practical way of offloading a hopper railcar in the safest and most efficient manner. The reason being is that a mobile conveyor assembly can be easily moved from hopper car to hopper car in a matter of minutes. This type of system is easily operated by just one person.

This type of device works by placing an open chute below the hopper car’s discharge opening located at the center bottom of the railcar. The conveyor belt is then extended at a 45-degree angle up, which discharges over the opening of a hopper trailer that is pulled by a semi truck.

This type of offloading is fast and secure. Since there is no intermediate transfer point, the chances of contamination are greatly reduced.

The speed at which one of these mobile conveyors can load a tractor trailer with 20 tons of sand is approximately 10 to 15 minutes. Since a railcar holds up to 100 tons, this means a single car can be unloaded nearly every hour with just one mobile conveyor. The more conveyors a transloading station has, the faster the train can be unloaded.

There are some stations that employ 3 such mobile devices and can handle 300 tons of sand an hour. This is equivalent to 15 tractor trailers ready for delivery of the bulk sand.

This process of bulk sand railcar unloading is done most efficiently in time and cost at a transloading station that employs a mobile conveyor belt.

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