Material Handling: Discharger Pierces Single-Use Bags to Boost Productivity

A new Bulk-Out Bulk Bag Discharger from Flexicon features a bag-piercing receiving hopper and side-mounted flow promotion devices to feed downstream processes at ultra-high rates.

The BFC Series discharger features a cantilevered I-beam with electric hoist and trolley for loading a bulk bag without the use of a forklift and lowering it onto the hopper's four-bladed knife. For applications that are suitable for single use bags, piercing the bag bottom from seam to seam reduces labor and cycle times by up to 95%, compared with connecting reusable bags to conventional unloaders, according to the company.

Pneumatically-actuated Flow-Flexer bag activators press and release opposite sides of the bag at timed intervals, promoting rapid and complete evacuation of free- and non-free-flowing materials.

The periphery of the bag bottom self-seals against a wide-diameter gasket at the rim of the hopper, eliminating the cost and additional headroom required for bag spout interfaces of conventional unloaders.

An optional dust plenum consisting of a hollow hopper rim vented to a plant dust collection system provides a secondary dust containment measure.

Compared with reusable bags, many of which are discarded after one use, single-use bags are typically less costly to purchase and contain less material to be discarded or recycled.

The hopper transition charges an optional flexible screw conveyor that transfers free- and non-free-flowing bulk materials from large pellets to sub-micron powders, including products that pack, cake, seize, smear, fluidize or break apart, with no separation of blends.

Also offered are transitions for other mechanical or pneumatic conveying systems, or universal flanged outlets for connection to downstream processes.