HIT Holzindustrie Torgau operates one of Europe’s biggest pallet production plants as well as a briquette production plant. To prepare wood shavings for subsequent processes in that production, the processing company needed an economical option for conveying residual wood out of its own sawmills before placing them in interim storage and making them available. Vecoplan® planned and supplied the machinery needed for disposing of resiual wood from new sawing lines – from a single source. The challenge: Vecoplan® installed some of the machinery while work was in progress, modifying an already existing disposal and treatment line to ensure that the leftover wood from the sawing lines was collected.
Wooden pellets and briquettes are climate-neutral fuels made from biomass. Ideally, they contain no chemical bonding agents and also have a high energy density. They are made from mechanically dried and untreated leftover wood from sawn timber production – for example shavings. To ensure they are available in defined qualities, they have to be treated. “We process only material from our own sawmills, in which we use only certified timber from sustainable forestry”, explains Günther Hilmer, Managing Partner of the HIT Group. “Moreover, the shavings from our mills don’t generate any unnecessary environmental impacts due to long transport distances for the raw material” – another asset on the ecological balance sheet of these products.
The HIT Group includes, in addition to HIT Holzindustrie Torgau OHG near Leipzig, plants in neighbouring Dahlen, in Limbach-Oberfrohna, and in Schleusingen, Thuringia. In Torgau, the company makes high-grade pallets, briquettes, pressed blocks and also sawn timber. On top of that, it trades with by-products such as raw bark, shavings and wood chips. For manufacture, HIT relies on a complete production chain.
Efficient handling of leftover wood
Due to the markedly increased demand for these products, HIT Holzindustrie Torgau decided to install two new sawing lines to add to the two it already had – with a total cutting capacity of more than one million cubic metres a year. In addition, further systems were to be installed for conveying, interim storage and supply of all the wood chip and sawdust quantities generated.
The decision-makers got in touch with Vecoplan® AG. This company, with headquarters in Bad Marienberg, Westerwald, develops and manufactures machines and systems for resource and recycling management. “Our tasks also include services such as planning, consultation, holistic project management and comprehensive after-sales service as well as installation, commissioning and maintenance work,” explains Michael Mützel of Sales at Vecoplan®. The challenge presented by this project: the machine makers had to install the standard conveyors and vibrating conveyors, the drum chippers and the screens sometimes while the plant was operating. What’s more, the material from all four sawing lines had to be collected for the subsequent inline processes like drying and block/briquette production.
Responsible for the complete process
The charging material is bark, offcuts, wood chips, sawdust or board pieces. The results of the process are, for example, wood chips in G30 grade or sawdust for pallet blocks. Vecoplan® designed, planned and implemented the complete process and also supplied the systems and components. In addition, it performed the mechanical fitting work and also commissioning. “But that didn’t mean the project ended for us”, says Michael Müller, project leader at Vecoplan. That was because shortly afterwards, HIT expanded its portfolio in Torgau, commissioning briquette production plant. This wood processing company makes up to 250 tonnes of this fuel every day. “To handle this, we installed conveying and storage systems“, says Michael Müller. Block production too was completely rebuilt. The conveying system also came from Vecoplan®. “We also had to adapt the existing sawmill disposal unit, which had come from a competitor, to the new situation”, reports Michael Müller. “To make the processes even more efficient, one year later we rebuilt this facility and connected it to the “Vecoplan System”.”
A tailor-made system
The centrepiece of the treatment systems is the shredding unit. That’s because the quality and grade of the wood chips depends on the composition and in particular on the proportion of fine particles in the wood shavings. Vecoplan® supplied a drum chipper and three screening machines to separate out over-long pieces and to enable the material to be screened into several levels and different fractions. A hammer mill is used to treat the sawdust. Eight so-called loading and unloading conveyors evenly fill and empty the storage boxes. They each consist of a distribution and discharging conveyor that can be moved upwards and downwards by a lifting device on steel cables passing over cable pulleys. There are 18 scew conveyors and vibrating conveyors with a total length of around 160 metres to ensure that the material reaches the conveying system in metered quantities. Vecoplan® installed drag chain conveyors with a total length of almost 1000 metres, and conveyor belts with 200 metres. “We have devised a tailor-made system that’s perfectly matched to what’s needed”, says Michael Mützel.
All system components for conveying, storage, dosing, silos and shredding come from Vecoplan®. This meant that HIT Holzindustrie Torgau had just one go-to company for all its needs over the full duration of the project. And that still applies: if servicing is needed, the processor can contact the machine manufacturer directly. “If any problems crop up, they’re swiftly rectified and dealt with in a workmanlike and practical solution”, is Günther Hilmer’s delighted verdict. “For us, Vecoplan® is a competent partner that can be relied on.”
Photo credits: Vecoplan® AG
