Cement, fly ash and those types, unloading. Top air?

I'm thinking he's referring to the old exhaust blowers. Every one I've ever seen had what looked like a little turbo mounted in the exhaust pipe.

 

Yes I was.

They usually sat outside the cab under the stack itself.

Crank engine to 2300, lock it there with the old manual lock and engage the Exhaust Blower after you have installed the main tank feed hose to it. Check the Mr Pyrometer 5 minutes in and as soon you reach 14 pounds start unloading product.

I greatly preferred either the Baltimore LeHigh's Export Elevator's air systems or the 400 horse electric pump assembly that when they are going you can take it straight to 15, open up all the pots and be empty in no time. (A stunt... but it has been done)

 

And here's me, running pneumatics for almost two years now, not realizing that product would even unload without "top air".

Granted, I do a lot of gravel and aggregate (salt, potash, phosphate, lime, etc) but I guess I've got some new things to try. Especially if I do more of that casting sand we've been picking up lately (finer than flour).

I've got 29.5 ton of pebbled lime down to about an hour and a half now, so I think I'm doing pretty good.

 

You definitely are - especially if you can do that whole load in an hour and a half without plugging up or blowing a hose (I hate blowing off pebbled lime).

 

Worked summers at a cement terminal. newly installed stack turbos had to be 'run in' and tested. We had a length of 3" pipe with a gate valve and a port with a pressure gauge. clamp that on and throttle up and engage the turbo. start closing the gate valve until you read 15 PSIG while examining the oil feed and returns for leaks. I think we had to hold the pressure for 5 or 10 min.

Always on second shift after the office had closed...

I had a neighbor come over to tell me my spark plugs were making interference on his antenna TV.....

 

I don't use vibrators unless I'm running hydrate, sand or pulverized limestone, and I won't use top air unless I'm running #3 lime.

For pebble products, I build up to whatever max the customer's silo allows, crack the line air about halfway, shut off top and bottom air, then open the product hopper. I can tell by the sound/feel of everything when the trailer pocket is starting to go empty. Depending on how far the product has to travel and whether or not there's backpressure on the line, I'll run my PTO anywhere from 900-1150 RPM. I'm done anywhere from an hour to 1:30, tops.


I'm unloading hydrate at this very moment; with this, cement, sand or pulverized products, I run minimal RPM (850) and just enough bottom air to maintain the pressure I want, barely cracking the line air and opening the hopper about halfway. Gravity and tank pressure work better at pushing the product down the line than air from the PTO. - I'll be finished anywhere from 35 minutes to an hour, depending on the max PSI permitted.

I've seen guys go full-hog at 18PSi, but ###### of they don't have to stop six times to take care of a plugged line, and it still takes them the same amount of time to get things done