Big order prompts further extension of CDC's continuous miner scrubber box range
Dust Buster News

Colliery Dust Control (CDC), South Africa’s top supplier of dust suppression systems for continuous miners and road headers, has added another size of wet-fan scrubber unit to its range. At the same time it has added to the diversity of designs of scrubber boxes it has on offer.

The latest developments have come about as a result of the Springs-based company receiving a batch of orders for scrubber units earlier this year from coal mining equipment supplier Voest Alpine Mining & Tunnelling of Delmas, one of the country’s leading suppliers of continuous miners and road headers to the local coal mining industry.

Among the various scrubber boxes ordered by Voest Alpine are double units intended for low-seam mining applications. The double units have two small fans set side-by-side to limit the overall height of the CM or road header as much as possible, while having a similar air intake capacity as a large single scrubber unit.

CDC has introduced a new extra-small box with a fan size of 480mm diameter for use in the innovative double units. This follows its introduction last year – also for a Voest Alpine miner – of an extra-large scrubber box with a fan size of 825mm diameter for high-seam mining.

The orders, received from Voest Alpine in April and May, were completed in May.

A pair of the new CDC double scrubber box units may be seen at Voest Alpine’s stand at the Electra Mining Africa exhibition at Johannesburg’s Expo Centre in September, where they will be installed on the new generation ABM12 low-seam bolter-miner that will be on display there.

The latest orders extend the number of different sizes of CDC scrubber boxes available to six – with a capacity range of 4 cu m/sec to 17 cu m/sec – while the company has also developed numerous designs of boxes during the past five years to meet a wide variety of different requirements by collieries and CM suppliers.

"The further proliferation of scrubber box designs that have resulted from the latest orders from Voest Alpine open up more opportunities for us in the market," commented Bob Johnstone, CDC’s general manager.

CDC supplies a three-fold integrated system comprising a CDC wet-fan scrubber unit, water-powered air movers and a spray fan system operating in complementary fashion to achieve maximum dust suppression efficiency.

The company has supplied about 70 per cent of the dust suppression systems serving South Africa’s total population of continuous miners currently in operation.

CDC’s product range encompasses the full spectrum of dust suppression equipment and accessories and it provides round-the-clock service backup, a service exchange scheme and service contract options.