Bucket Elevator and Its Three Main Types Used for Steel Silo in China

Bucket Elevator is the most important vertical elevating equipment commonly used to a steel silo to help convey powder or small size of materials upwards. It has the advantages of simple structure, small occupied area, low power consumption and large conveying capacity. Its full-closed shell can effectively avoid dust pollution, bring us good working environment.

Main structure

Bucket elevator is composed of the operating components, the driving device, the upper components, the middle components and the bottom components. 

1. The operating components: they include from the bucket and special plate chain. The chain is welding ring chain made of round steel. The bucket is fixed on the joints of the chain with nuts.
2. The driving device: it consists of drive shaft component, coupling, speed reducer, the motor and triangle belt. They are assembled into complete device. Depending on actual needs of the users, the device can use a variety of modes. The combined drives or multi drive, any is ok. There are maintenance racks and the railings installed on the driving platforms including left type and right type.
3. The upper components: They are equipped with a track (double chains), backstop, the unloading hole and rubber plate used for the resistance of material backfilling. 
4. The middle components: it refers to the shell of the equipment. According to the needs of the elevated height, the configuration of the different numbers of middle shells chassis has to be provided enough. The part of the middle components is provided with a track (double chain) to prevent the chain swinging. 
5. The bottom components: it consists of the bottom shell, driven shaft components and the tension device. At the side of the shell there is a door that can be opened in order to have the internal inspection such as cleaning.

Installation of bucket elevator 

1. The bucket elevator must be firmly installed on a solid foundation of reinforced concrete. The surface of the foundation shall be flat and horizontal, ensuring the vertical installation requirements the bucket elevator. For relatively higher steel silo, we must install corresponding higher elevator. After reaching certain vertical and proper position on upper or middle places, we need to have a firm connection with adjacent silo to increase its stability. During the installation, the bottom components shall be done first. Fix the anchor bolts, and then install the middle shells, finally install the upper shells. After successful installation of the shells, we need to correct the verticality. Using a plumb line for measurement, we should ensure the tolerance to be limited within 10mm. The upper and lower shafts should be parallel and their axis should be kept in the same plane. For the lower height of bucket elevator, as the installation, we can finish all the assembly works of bucket elevator on the ground, and then hoist the whole equipment to be straightly fixed on the foundation.
2. After the shell installation, we will do the installation of the chain and the bucket. The buckets are connected with U type screws that are used as chain joints as well as the fasteners of the buckets. The U type screws must be tightened with reliable locking performance.
3. After the installation of the chains and buckets, we need do the appropriate tightening operation. 
4. Apply the appropriate amount of machine oil and grease on speed reducer and bearing seat. The speed reducer is lubricated with industrial machine oil. The bearing seat is done with grease. 
5. Commissioning: after the completion of the installation, we should perform the test of unloaded commissioning. The precautions should be noted in the test: the system cannot do reversed working and give rise to bumping phenomenon. The unloaded commissioning shall be controlled in not less than 2 hours, without overheating phenomenon (Bearing temperature≤ 250℃；Speed reducer temperature ≤300℃). After 2 hours, if all is normal, we can be carried out to the loaded commissioning. The test shall be fed as uniformly as possible to prevent the clogging phenomenon arising out of excessive feeding. 

Maintenance 

• Before we stop the bucket elevator, we should ensure that we have drained of all the materials in the buckets. 
• We cannot do the reversed operation on the bucket elevator because this is likely to lead to the chain derailment phenomenon. Eliminating derailment malfunction is very troublesome job. 
• To increase the amount of lubricating oil in a timely manner
• The chains and the buckets should be replaced in time when they are badly worn or damaged.

Some types of bucket elevators in China

Nowadays in China there are three types of bucket elevators, that is, TH type, TD type and NE type. Next, we will show you their technical parameters.

Table1 Technical parameters of TH type bucket elevator

Table2 Technical parameters of TD type bucket elevator

Table3 Technical parameters of NE type bucket elevator