Qlar (formerly the Schenck Process Group) is an established customer-driven solutions provider, utilising its knowledge, expertise, and technologies to transform production processes. Qlar has developed many quality solutions and is well-respected for applying pneumatic conveying and injection to solve problems in non-ferrous smelters, for over 50 years, handling concentrates, mattes, fuels, additives, and metallurgical dusts. During 2024 Schenck Process rebranded Qlar, to show our commitment, to sustainable and cirQlar solutions. Our solutions have always been long lasting, low maintenance, high performance, easily refurbished, helping to deliver low pneumatic handling costs throughout our 50-year history. But now we are adding condition monitoring to maintain performance and lower carbon footprint throughout the life of the equipment. We now have added benchmarking and maintenance aids to our portfolio ensuring our systems continue to offer the same low environmental footprint they were designed and commissioned to deliver. Unfortunately, pneumatic handling systems are often maintained poorly or by teams who do not understand the changes they make to solve a one-off problem then cost the company much more in power going forward. We now have a flow and pressure monitor which allows us to harvest data and investigate the system performance. This works not only for our systems, but any pneumatic handling system. If you have dense phase conveying systems, there is more than likely some improvements we can make to save energy and therefore give a quick return on investment. Our simple CONiQ Cloud e-Dense meter is mounted in the clean side air supply and harvests data either to the on-board storage, or direct to the cloud, then full remote interrogation and support is available from Qlar. Basic parameters are displayed on the units HMI. Already installed in your challenging environment the systems are suitable for smelter use. Data is always interesting but once uploaded to the cloud and analysed with AI ‘Intelligent Review’ can indicate improvements to performance for the maintenance team to carry out. Our UK test centre can characterise materials, design flow angles, minimum valve sizes, hopper design, pick up velocities, delivery methodologies using our vast array of pneumatic conveying equipment to demonstrate possible improvements or complete solutions where you have a desire to introduce or a need to eliminate inconsistent performance in your smelter handling. Our team of experienced service engineers can attend site and work with your team to improve systems or with the aid of the CONiQ Cloud e-Dense meter we can use that analysis and support on a daily ongoing basis, remotely. This paper discusses the Qlar approach to reliable pneumatic handling for a more sustainable solution with examples from recent installations. Minimising energy and carbon usage is vital, this equipment can reduce your waste in dense phase conveying. Enabling cirQlar solutions! Working in partnership with Qlar delivers not only the equipment that makes processes work but provides data, maintains performance, and delivers value both commercially and environmentally.
