SWITZERLAND – Raw materials have been extracted from Rio Tinto's Boron mine (the world’s largest borax mine) in California for almost 100 years. Because management was increasingly faced with the problem of the extreme dirt on the construction vehicles, Rio Tinto started using the MobyDick demucking station from the Swiss firm Frutiger a short time ago.
Unlike the MobyDick wheel washing systems in use worldwide, the purpose of a demucking station is not to keep public highways clean but to free the chassis, the underbody and wheels or crawler tracks of construction vehicles automatically from coarse dirt within just a few minutes.
Clumps of earth sticking to the axles and chassis push up fuel costs and causing damage. Until a short time ago the vehicles had to be driven onto a ramp and manually washed using a high pressure cleaner before being serviced. The MobyDick demucking station was installed just a few weeks ago to combat this problem. The entire fleet can be regularly cleaned thanks to this solution. Washing the entire front, side and chassis now only takes just five minutes, and the vehicles can go back into service straight away. This saves resources, spares the environment and improves the working environment.
The washing system is capable of cleaning crawler tracks up to the size of a D11 caterpillar, but also dump trucks and wheel loaders depending on the customer’s requirements. The washing water is not generally contaminated because of the low pressure and automatically flows back into the system during the cleaning process. This is then reprocessed for the next washing operation. The accumulated sludge is discharged by the chain conveyor at the side and can be disposed of easily.
The MobyDick cannon line, established just a short time ago, epitomises these characteristics. These modern canons for dust control are the result of a close co-operation between Frutiger and Savic Engineering in the field of dust control and reliably solve the problem of unwanted dust emissions in the air. Following detailed analysis, Frutiger has also developed tailored all-in-one solutions that are used for a very wide range of applications for indoor and outdoor use.
MobyDick experts are represented all over the world to solve the problems of dirt and dust around construction sites, trans-shipment areas, recycling yards, quarries, mines, steel and cement works. Learn more at MobyDick.com.
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