This case study looks at a cyclone separator installed at a stave mill. A stave mill is a specialized sawmill that processes hardwood logs—primarily white oak—into narrow, shaped strips of wood called staves, which are assembled to create the sides of barrels for aging whiskey and wine. This mill generated a large amount of green sawdust in the process of turning logs into staves.
We selected a cyclone material separator from Honeyville Metal to install for this customer. A cyclone dust collector separates particulates from air using centrifugal force in a rapidly spinning vortex, allowing heavy dust to drop into a container while clean air exits the top. Dust-laden air enters tangentially, spiraling down a conical chamber; inertia forces particles to the outer walls, where they lose velocity and fall into a hopper. A cyclone works great for airstreams with larger more dense saw dust that contains some moisture. This type of dust can be very abrasive so we choose to upgrade the cyclone to the heavy duty option which includes a 1/4″ HR steel top section and a 3/16″ HR steel cone section.
The customer chose to blow the sawdust into full size truck trailers. This is a common method for handling large volumes of waste, allowing for easy transport to farms or facilities for use as animal bedding or fuel. This set up uses a separate blower to move the material as it is discharged out of the cyclone and blow it into the trailers. The cyclone has an airlock on the bottom of it so that the dust can discharge into a pressurized relay line without interfering with the air flow and pressure inside the cyclone. An airlock is a discharge valve placed at the bottom of a hopper to allow collected dust to exit while maintaining an airtight seal. It prevents air from leaking into (under vacuum) or out of (under pressure) the system, ensuring proper suction, maximum efficiency, and explosion protection. The ductwork has diverter valves installed so that the customer can set up two different trailers and switch the lines to be able to blow into either one. This keeps the customer running production even while the waste trailers are being emptied. This was actually the second system that Precision Industrial installed for this customer. The first one met the needs of the customer so well that they want to duplicate it when it came time to expand their business.
