APPLICATION:
A major plastics production plant needed to closely monitors bulk inventory to avoid production delays. The plant provides a variety of products fed from plastic pellet storage silos. The facility also uses polyvinyl chloride (S-PVC) which is the world’s third-most widely produced synthetic polymer of plastic.
How are plastic pellets produced?
Plastic pellets are produced by major petrochemical companies that provide this bulk material to plastics producers. The pellets created on a plastic pelletizing line then are trucked to a production plant, moved by plastic pellet transfer systems, and fed to plastic pellet storage silos.
How is polyvinyl chloride produced?
PVC, a light powder, comes from the chemical transformation of salt and oil. Saltwater turns to chlorine. It’s combined with ethylene and turns into a vinyl monomer then a PVC resin. Major manufacturers are in the U.S., Mexico, China, and South Korea. PVC is the world’s third-most widely produced synthetic polymer of plastic. In the U.S., about 40 million tons of PVC are produced each year. PVC powder is stored in silos prior to being delivered or packaged. Silos can be large in size containing thousands of tons per silo.
PROBLEM:
The plant was juggling multiple types and colors of raw materials with various types of densities to produce products. Some bulk material inventory was Custom Owned Inventory, and other raw materials were company-owned. Employees climbed each bin multiple times per day to report on inventory levels. Materials ordering was a bit jumbled.
SOLUTION:
BinMaster created a solution for all raw materials including pellets and PVC powder with a system of 3DLevelScanners which monitored each container and tank delivering inventory into one, easy-to-access cloud report shared by multiple departments and even by those managing Customer Owned Inventory. The 3DLevelScanners worked great despite some silos with extra dust and varying levels of dialectic relatively low dielectric constants. The system is perfect for the plastics industry thanks to the low-frequency, acoustic-based technology. The acoustic sensor delivers accurate, reliable, and continuous non-contact volume measurements with ResinView.
