Melt Facility 2

[sshep]

My Friends,

I wish to provide a plant with a faclity to melt solid paraffin wax (need approx 180F) which is recovered from various plant operations. The heating medium should be steam (coil or jacket). I would like a facility which could easily process spill sized quantities (5 or 6 drums). The melted wax would be recovered back into the process.

I think such equipment might be comercially available. Are there any recommendations of suppliers?

best wishes,
sshep

 

[Mutt]

I have some limited experience of melting scrap wax and found that heating the wax chunks in a vessel to be very slow. Especially if use low pressure steam so that you don't brown (crack and/or oxidise) the wax. Best method was to have a rack of pipes with steam of correct grade inside them positioned on top of a jacketed vessel. The lumps of wax are dumped on top of the grid. The gap between the pipes should be small enough to not let chunks through. As they melt the molten wax drips into the vessel where they are kept hot and molten by the vessel jacket. Means the solids chunks are always against the grid thanks to gravity so get heat transfer as the molten drips away. Trying to melt in a vessel meant required agitation but as there is no melt at start up especially takes ages to get enough liquid wax in the vessel before can start agitating.

There are heated screw mixers which can also do the job but we had irregular chunks and got feeder blockages.

 

[racookpe1978]

If the waste/spill dropped on the floor, how will you clean it sufficiently to go back into the process line?

 

[sshep]

Hello racookpe1978,

I have been on holiday and now back, but advice on the design of a good melt facility is still appreciated.

In answer to your query about dirt and debris, this is upstream raw wax, far from the final use, and the scale is such that some dirt and debris is not a big deal. My experience with one of our other melt facilities for solid alcohols, we pump it through filters (pump suction strainer, pump, filter) and then to a slop tank to blend back into the process. That facility was an after-thought but pretty good, but this time we want to make it even better.

Any advice is still appreciated.

best wishes,
sshep

 

[Compositepro]

What you need is a "steam kettle". These are very common in food processing and institutional kitchens. You can get used ones relatively cheap. Here are example from ebay.

http://www.ebay.com/sch/i.html?_fro...0.H1.Xsteam+kettle&_nkw=steam+kettle&_sacat=0