AISTech 2019 — Proceedings of the Iron & Steel Technology Conference

6–9 May 2019, Pittsburgh, Pa., USA

DOI 10.1000.377.011

Latest Development and Application of ECIA Material Handling Technologies

Zhanwen Liu1, Ting Lei1, Yu Ai1, Hongliang Yue1

1
Company name: CISDI Engineering Co., Ltd.
Address: No.1, Saidi Road, Liangjiang New Area, Chongqing 401122, China Phone: +86 23 6354 5280
Email: MH@cisdi.com.cn

Keywords: eco-friendly stockyard; intelligent stockyard; energy-saving; clean production

INTRODUCTION
Bulk material yard is an important production unit of integrated steelworks, where bulk materials are stored and handled. It
mainly serves users such as coke plant, sinter plant, pellet plant, lime calcination plant, ironmaking plant, steelmaking plant
and power plant, and undertakes tasks such as unloading, loading, stacking, reclaiming, storing, processing and conveying of
bulk materials needed for production1.
Thanks to the rapid expansion of China's steel production capacity, bulk material handling technology for steel industry has
also achieved rapid development. Relying on a number of large key projects, China's bulk material handling technology has
gradually transformed from a technology follower to a technology leader. Especially in recent ten years (2009 ~ 2019), China
has being increasingly strict with steel producers regarding environment protection and intelligent manufacture, which
boosted the development of eco-friendly and intelligent stockyard technology, contributing to a full spectrum of well-proven
technical solutions which have found successful application in the market.
According to its historical evolution, the development of bulk material handling technology in China can be roughly divided
into four stages, namely manual/semi-mechanization, mechanization, mechanization and eco-friendly and ECIA, as shown in
Fig. 1.

Fig. 1 Development stages of bulk material handling technology in China

The bulk material handling technology has formed a multidisciplinary collaborative system, which involves not only
traditional disciplines such as mechanical, electrical, construction, structure, energy & utilities, but also integrates with

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information technology, cloud computing, big data, artificial intelligence. Innovation and fusion as the core driving force of
bulk material handling technology development, meanwhile environmental protection, efficient, low consumption, high
intelligence becomes the focus and core appeal to the sustainable development in the future. Therefore, this paper will
elaborate the emerging and key eco-friendly stockyard technology, clean production technology and intelligent stockyard
technology.

1. ECO-FRIENDLY STOCKYARD TECHNOLOGY

Stockyard is one of the key pollution sources in steel plants, which generates a huge amount of dust during operation. The
eco-friendly bulk material storage technology can effectively reduce dust generation, reduce environmental pollution, reduce
the impact of climate on material consumption and operations, ensure material quality and reduce production cost. According
to the different layout of stockyard and configuration of stacker-reclaimer, eco-friendly stockyard is available in B type, C
type, D type, E type and M type (Fig. 2) 3. Each type has its own advantages over the traditional open stockyard in terms of
environmental protection, consumption reduction, emission reduction, energy saving, land saving and stable production.

Fig.2 Various Types of Eco-friendly Stockyards (Right: M-type)

1.1 B-type stockyard

B-type stockyard refers to a longitudinal closed material yard with rail-bound mechanized stacker-reclaimer, without partition
wall between stockpiles. B-type stockyard is derived from the traditional mechanized open stockyard by simply providing a
cover on it, so it is the same as the traditional mechanized open yard in terms of process and stacker-reclaimer configuration,
which is applicable for both primary yard and blending yard.

1.2 C-type stockyard

C-type stockyard refers to a longitudinal closed material yard with rail-bound mechanized stacker-reclaimer, with partition
wall between stockpiles. It is a widely used eco-friendly storage technology in metallurgical industry. It implements a tripper
on the top platform of the yard for stacking and a semi-portal scraper for reclaiming.

1.3 D-type stockyard

D-type stockyard refers to a circular closed material yard operated by rotary stacker-reclaimer. Materials are input by top belt
conveyor and discharged from the center of the yard to the rotary cantilever stacker for stacking, forming an annular
stockpile, while portal scraper reclaimer is used for reclaiming. D-type yard is applicable for primary yard or blending yard.
When used as blending yard, circular partition wall shall not be installed around the yard.

1.4 E-type stockyard

E-type stockyard refers to closed silos where material is stacked at the top while discharged from the bottom. E-type
stockyard is usually designed with groups of silos. Belt conveyor and tripper are installed at the top of silos to feed material
into the silo. The materials in the silo are discharged through the gate or feeder and exported through the belt conveyor at the
bottom of the silo.

1.5 M-type stockyard

M-type stockyard is a new type of Eco-friendly stockyard technology, which combines traditional eco-friendly yard
technology. M-type stockyard has a closed storage unit that can adapt to different material properties and storage

98 © 2019 by the Association for Iron & Steel Technology.

requirements, and integrates all storage units to form a whole. It has the characteristics and advantages of storage chamber
and silo combined.
The five different types of Eco-friendly stockyards have their own characteristics in stacker-reclaimer, land occupation,
storage capacity and operation mode. The detailed comparison is shown in Table 1. In practical application, it is necessary to
analyze and determine the type of yard according to the specific situation.

Table 1 Comparison among Different Stockyard Types

Type Advantages Disadvantages

• Flexible stockpile arrangement • Small unit area storage capacity

• Easy construction and low investment
B • Controllable discharging height, low
dust emission and material
degradation
• Large unit area storage capacity
• Separate stacking and reclaiming
C
operation
• Relatively high level of intelligence
• Large unit area storage capacity
• Separate stacking and reclaiming
D
operation
• High level of intelligence
• Storage capacity greatly affected by
quantity of piles
• Low level of intelligence
• Fixed stockpile allocation, poor
flexibility of switch-over between
material types
• Large material falling height, High
dust emission and material
degradation
• Storage capacity greatly affected by
quantity of piles, Not Suitable for
large material varieties
• Large material falling height, high
dust
• emission and material degradation

• Requiring large bearing capacity of

• Larger unit area storage capacity foundation
• Storage & proportioning integrated • High investment
E
• First-in and first-out • Limited variety of storage materials,
• High level of intelligence poor flexibility of variety switch-
over

• Larger unit area storage capacity

• High adaptability of different material
• Full utilization of structure and • High requirement of bearing
excellent mechanical performance capacity of foundation
M
• Flexible configuration of input and • Not Suitable for Small yard
output lines • Relatively high investment
• More compact and integrated
• High level of intelligence

1.6 Benefits of Eco-friendly stockyard

The technology of Eco-friendly stockyard has obvious advantages in environmental protection, energy saving, consumption
reduction, stable production and intelligence. It can significantly reduce the production cost of the BF-upstream process, and
bring huge social and economic benefits to steel plant.
• Reduce dust emission by 90% compared to open yard, reduce over 85% material loss, storage capacity is increased
by ~2 times (except for B-type material yard)
• Wind proof, rain proof, freeze proof and thunderstorm proof, ensuring good raw material quality and production
safety
• Reduce operation cost by about USD $1.5-6 per ton hot metal

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The Eco-friendly storage technology has significant advantages in improving the environment inside and around the factory,
establishing eco-friendly factory, enhancing the competitiveness of enterprise brand and social influence. Environment
comparison between traditional open yard and eco-friendly yard is shown in Fig. 4 and 5.

Fig. 4 Open yard Fig. 5 Eco-friendly yard

2 CLEAN PRODUCTION TECHNOLOGY

Clean production technology aims to offer targeted solutions to the problems such as dust emission, material scattering and
leakage, environment pollution etc., which usually occur during the material unloading, conveying and transferring process.
Through the application of the technology, the working conditions shall be improved, the OPEX shall be cut down and the
labor productivity shall be raised.

2.1 Clean Loading and Unloading

The material loading and unloading facilities consist of receiving facilities for rail, truck and port, as well as material
stockyard, storage bins and storage hoppers. There will be a lot of dust emission and material scattering during the material
unloading process due to large material falling height and large flow quantity. So the dust emission control will be the most
important part during this section.

Fig. 6 storage bins dust emission during material discharging (left) Fig. 7 stockyard dust emission during material unloading
(right)
The atomized dust suppression equipment (Fig. 8 and 9) can be used to the truck and rail receiving process, atomization
injection gun (Fig. 10) used in the stockyard, and environmental tripper (Fig. 11) used in storage bins/hoppers to suppress
dust emission and decrease its density.

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 Fig. 8 Atomization equipment for wagon dumper Fig. 9 Atomization equipment for truck bins

Fig. 10 Atomization gun for stockyard Fig.11 Eco-friendly dumper

2.2 Clean conveying

There are some hard tasks to overcome during the material conveying such as material scattering and piling (Fig. 12), scrap
or mud accumulation to the conveyor corridor (Fig. 13), dust emission etc. caused by open transportation, equipment
vibration, bad sealing or cleaning to the belt surface. These problems will cause material loss, environment damage, and to
some extreme conditions the combustive dust accumulation may lead to a fire accident to threat safety production.

Fig. 12 material scattering and piling to Fig. 13 scrap, mud and corrosion to the
the conveyor corridor conveyor corridor
Clean conveying mainly offers technical solutions in two levels. The first is to make conveying system closed with
appropriate methods. The closed corridor (Fig.14) shall be considered for the newly designed conveying system especially
for the normal belt conveyor system to avoid the dust emission. As for existing conveying system the online revamping is
needed to be done with steel plate or membrane cover material (Fig.15) in order to cut down the CAPEX and facilitate the
revamping difficulty. The second is choosing better closed conveying equipment such as pipeline transportation, tubular belt
conveyor (Fig.16) and air cushion belt conveyor (Fig.17) etc., which can be used to convey some specific materials according
to theirs characteristics for the steel plants. Meanwhile some technologies including rolling the return belt into tube, turning
over the return belt and adding new cleaning device also can be applied to fulfill a deep and diversified improvement.

© 2019 by the Association for Iron & Steel Technology. 101

 Fig.14 Steel structure closed belt conveyor corridor Fig.15 membrane cover closed belt conveyor
corridor

Fig.16 tubular belt conveyor Fig.17 air cushion belt conveyor

2.3 clean transferring

The material flow will change its location and velocity when it comes to the transfer point. And a series of non-clean product
behaviors will happen due to such changes, which include dust emission, material leakage and scattering, equipment
vibration, chute clog and abrasion and so on.
Clean transferring puts forward a five-in-one ideology and corresponding industrial products to resolve the problems. This
ideology combines some effective methods for dust control such as steering, guiding, sweeping, sealing and suppressing
together into one comprehensive governing measure.
• Steering. In this section, the steering cover (Fig.18) with material flow adjusting device will be used to control the
material flow direction and velocity so as to smooth the sharp energy change. This will reduce dust generation from
source.

Fig.18 Steering cover Fig.19 Multi-angle arc chute

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 • Guiding. In this section, the multi-angle arc chute (Fig.19) will be used to guide and cluster the material flow so as to
reduce the impact caused by the material falling. This will reduce dust generation and improve the equipment
vibration.
• Sealing. In this section, the variable cross-section and multiple damping skirt board (Fig.20) will be used at material
receiving point to guide and control the dust moving routes so as to avoid its irregular movement and reduce its
fugitive.
• Suppressing. In this section, the buffer and atomized dust suppression device (Fig.20) will be used at material
receiving point to control the dust generation and its fugitive caused by rapid and irregular movement.
• Sweeping. In this section, the efficient cleaner and new type conveyor head frame (fig. 22), the addition of residual
material cleaning recovery device (fig. 23) and other measures will be adopted to improve the cleaning effect,
reduce the scope of residual material pollution and equipment maintenance workload.

Fig.20 FEM analysis of variable cross-section and Fig.21 Atomized dust suppressing device
multiple damping skirt board

Fig.22 new type belt conveyor head frame Fig.23 residual material recovery device

In addition, it can also reduce the drop height difference of the transfer point through the process layout of the same layer
transport and movable head, so as to reduce the generation of dust.
The transfer point is the main pollution source of the raw material conveying system. The five-in-one management means is a
passive afterwards measure, but reducing the number of transfer point as far as possible if the condition allows is the active
precaution measure beforehand, just be a cure for the root.

2.4 benefits of clean production

Clean production technology can not only realize the cleanliness of production process, but also provide guarantee for safe
and stable production, with high social and economic benefits4.
• Improve the material handling process working conditions effectively
• Reduce the material loss caused by the dust fugitive, wind and rain during the transportation and storage process to
save the cost.
• Reduce the labor quota and decrease workload of cleaning jobs.
• Stabilize equipment operation and extend its working life to minimize the maintenance cost.
• Reduce the incidence of production accidents and guarantee safe production.

© 2019 by the Association for Iron & Steel Technology. 103

As a systematic project, the concept of clean production should be introduced in time from the early planning stage of the
project. Targeted technical strategies should be adopted for different problem points in the design stage. Only by tracking and
improving in time after the project is put into production, can the effect of treating both symptoms and root causes be
achieved.

3. INTELLIGENT BULK MATERIAL YARD TECHNOLOGY

MCC CISDI is taking the leading role in the research and industrial application of intelligent material stockyard technology,
with formed a set of mature technical system, functional model and specific solutions. Relying on new technologies such as
information network, intelligent control, 3D scanning and intelligent detection, CISDI has successfully built a number of
intelligent bulk material farms with advanced technologies, first-class equipment, efficient production, environmental
protection and green ideas, which meet the needs of raw material supply of modern iron and steel enterprises. The technology
has been successfully applied in Baosteel Zhanjiang, WISCO, Guangdong shaoguan iron and steel and other projects, and
achieved good results.
The main functional modules of the intelligent bulk material yard model developed by CISDI are shown in Fig. 24.

Fig. 24 Function module of CISDI intelligent material stockyard

3.1 Intelligent logistics system

The intelligent logistics system mainly includes intelligent process decision-making model, intelligent mixing batching,
intelligent stacking model, automatic logistics navigation model and automatic process operation control, etc. This system
mainly realizes the intelligent automatic control of bulk material conveying operation process, real-time production
monitoring, and improves the timeliness and accuracy of data in the process of production and operation activities, so as to
provide support for the continuous optimization of production process.

3.2 Digital material yard5

The digital stock yard system consists of three parts: data acquisition, data splicing and data analysis. In this system, 3D laser
scanner is used to scan the material yard and the material pile to obtain the point cloud data of the object, and store the data in
the communication server. The model computer analyzes and processes the data, and outputs the inventory report including
the parameters of the pile, starting point and ending point coordinates, and the volume of the pile etc., to realize the automatic
inventory function and generate 3D stockyard plot.

3.3 Unmanned stacking and reclaiming

The unmanned stacking and reclaiming system is equipped with high-performance detection elements, using intelligent
control algorithm to realize the unmanned operation of the stacker and reclaimer. The system is composed of machine
positioning module, material pile identification module, intelligent control module, safety module and monitoring module.
According to the feedback of the position information of the machine positioning module and the feedback of the material
pile identification module, the intelligent model controls the automatic operation of the equipment. The safety module is used
to avoid collision between devices and output alarm information before the collision. The monitor module is used for remote

104 © 2019 by the Association for Iron & Steel Technology.

video monitoring of the device. This system can improve operation efficiency and reduce labor workload. The unmanned
stacking is shown in Fig. 25.

Fig. 25 on-site unmanned stacking operation

Fig. 26 Block diagram of intelligent operation and maintenance workflow

3.4 Intelligent operation and maintenance

The intelligent operation and maintenance system can automatically track the operation, failure, shutdown and other state
information of the equipment and record it into the database automatically. After data analysis and processing, it can generate
early warning information of equipment maintenance and repair, change the passive maintenance into active maintenance,
improve the comprehensive reliability of the equipment and reduce the occurrence of unexpected faults. The work flow chart
is shown Fig.26.

3.5 Apple factory

Apple factory is designed to tailor a set of exclusive APP for users, and send classified and layered production data and
important information to relevant personnel.

3.6 Virtual production simulation system

The virtual production simulation system can obtain real-time data in the field production process, set various simulation
conditions and parameters according to the operator, simulate the real production of the raw material yard, and generate the
corresponding results report. It is mainly used to realize the functions of job planning guidance and production change
decision support.

3.7 Big data cloud platform

Relying on cloud computing technology, the company has built a big data cloud platform of raw material yard to realize the
optimization of production and operation, the optimization of material yard inventory and the improvement of the quality of
blending ore.

3.8 Benefit of intelligent bulk material yard

Intelligent bulk material yard will bring benefits for owners in the following aspects.
• Unmanned or less unmanned operation can realize personnel safety prevention and control effectively and achieve
essential safety in production.

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 • The unmanned stacking can improve the utilization rate of 10%~20% and realize the fine management of
production.
• Improve inventory efficiency ~90%, reduce labor quota by 20%~30%, improve labor productivity.
• Reduce the accident rate of downtime and conveying system idling rate to 60%, reduce the overall energy
consumption by 3%~5%, to achieve energy saving and consumption reduction.

4. TYPICAL PROJECTS

4.1 Baosteel bulk material yard environmental overhaul revamping project

The overhaul revamping project of baosteel bulk material yard is a typical case of the online environmental protection
reconstruction and function improvement of the existing super large joint iron and steel enterprise bulk material yard.
Baosteel bulk material yard is one of the largest material yards in the world (FIG. 27). It is responsible for the input, storage
and processing of more than 95% of bulk materials in plant, and conveying materials to users such as blast furnace, sintering,
coking, power plant, lime calcination plant and steelmaking plant. The annual handling quantity is over 130 million tons.
Before the revamping, except for coal-drying shed, all the other bulk material yards were open, and there were serious
problems of environmental pollution and material loss. At the same time because of long-term exposure to the air, equipment
and steel structure corrosion brings certain safety danger6. So Baosteel bulk material yard started the overhaul revamping
project in November 2011, and started construction in August 2012. This project is divided into 17 sub-items and will be
completed and put into operation in December 2019 (Fig. 28).

Fig. 27 Before the revamping of Baosteel bulk Fig. 28 Revamping renderings of Baosteel bulk
material yard material yard

This project focuses on CISDI environmental material storage technology, a total of 13 B/C/E type closed yard construction,
all materials are classified according to its physical and chemical characteristics of fully closed storage and transportation, to
achieve the bulk material unit "ore shed, coal warehouse; Material is not to be found”. The revamping effectively improves
the bulk material handling area and surrounding environment, reduces dust fugitive density to under 1.0mg/m3.
Applying the CISDI advanced environmental protection bulk material storage technology, the area of the material yard is
reduced by 23%, with equivalent storage capacity and the material loss is reduced from 0.66% to less than 0.36%. The
system runs reliably, efficiently, works stably and guarantees safe production.

4.2 Baosteel Zhanjiang base intelligent stockyard

Baosteel zhanjiang base material stockyard has four parts, which are A-type ore yard, B-type ore yard, B-type coal yard and
D type coal yard. And now C-type ore yard is under construction At present, the intelligent stockyard technologies including
digital stockyard and unmanned stacking-reclaimming operation has been realized to A-type and B-type ore yard.
Equipped with a laser 3D cloud image acquisition system Zhanjiang digital material yard realize the real-time scanning of the
contour of the material pile. In addition, utilizing the image processing technology and high-precision 3D image
reconstruction technology a real-time 3D digital material heap model and material field map is established to present the
material pile information in a digital form. The digital material yard system supports automatic inventory and real-time
browsing of the stock situation of the material yard and the configuration change of the material pile level, so as to realize the
digitalization and fine control of the material yard, and provide intelligent perception data support for the automatic operation
system of the stacking and reclaiming equipment. The implementation effect is shown in Fig.29.

106 © 2019 by the Association for Iron & Steel Technology.

 Fig.29 Zhanjiang digital material yard Fig.30 Zhanjiang unmanned stacking operation
The automatic operation system of the stacker and reclaimer in zhanjiang material stockyard adopts the technology of main
machine attitude positioning and image recognition, decomposes and executes the stacker and reclaimer modules, generates
the control commands of the stacker, reclaimer and stacker&reclaimer, and realizes the remote automatic operation. The
implementation effect is shown in Fig.30.
As a result, the stockyard’s productivity has been enhanced by 20% while reducing 70% labor cost. The working environment
gets better comprehensively.

CONCLUSIONS
Due to limited space, this paper only discusses several hot technologies in bulk material handling technology field. So far,
bulk material handling technology has a complex technical system and rich technical reserves. The problems and
requirements in bulk material handling should be combined with the actual situation to provide targeted solutions, in order to
achieve twice the result with half the effort.
"A single flower does not make a spring, but a hundred flowers make a full garden”. The origin and development of each
wave of technological innovation is the result of the cross integration of other industries and technologies. The demand and
supporting technologies reflect each other, add fuel to the fire, and form a grand view of bulk material handling technology. It
is just the breakthrough and development of structural technologies such as foundation treatment, long-span grid frame and
new covering materials that enable the rapid application of environment-friendly bulk material yard technology. Due to the
rapid development and integration of cloud computing, big data, artificial intelligence and other information technologies, the
intelligent bulk material yard has become a reality from a dream. The future-oriented bulk material handling technology
should pay close attention to the dynamics of emerging technologies with a broader mind and vision, keep pace with the
times, and constantly promote the development of bulk material handling technology.

REFERENCES
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3. Xiange Gu，Application of environmental protection material yard technology in a steel plant, iron and steel
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4. Jianye Liu, Shaopei Geng. Clean production study and improvements for the raw material handling process in
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