A modern sulphur handling terminal is taking shape in the port of Ust Luga, located at the mouth of the river Luga at the Baltic Sea, not far from the Estonian border. The terminal will initially reachan annual handling capacity of four million tonnes. This will rise to 10 million tonnes per year, following a subsequent extension of the plant. The terminal owner is the company EST European Sulphur Terminal of St. Petersburg and the materials handling equipment for the terminal is being supplied by the Materials Handling business unit of ThyssenKrupp Fördertechnik, one of the world’s leading suppliers of advanced-technology materials handling equipment.
The sulphur will arrive in either closed or open railway wagons. The closed wagons will be unloaded independently by opening the side wall flaps in a wagon dumper, while the open cars will be lifted from the rail track and simultaneously emptied into a bunker by means of a side discharge dumper which turns the wagons upside down to release the material.
The side discharge dumper will be able to complete 22 unloading cycles per hour and will therefore reach an unloading capacity of 1,600 t/h, whereas the unloading capacity for closed cars will be 1,000 t/h. From the two unloading stations, the material will be transported into a storage hall where it will be stacked in piles by an overhead tripper system running along the apex of the store. When required, the material will be reclaimed from the piles by a full portal scraper and transported by a belt conveyor system to the loading quay at the port. The reclaiming capacity of the full portal scraper and the belt conveyors will be 2,000 t/h.
On the quay, a TKF shiploader with a capacity of 2,000 t/h will then load the bulk material (sulphur, urea and other fertilizers) into 70,000 dwt ships. Special requirements had to be taken into consideration when designing and configuring the shiploaders, particularly with regard to environmental protection, i.e. dust and noise emissions, as well as ease of operation. ThyssenKrupp Fördertechnik were able to use their many years of experience and knowledge of shiploader construction in order to implement the necessary measures and solutions which were required to achieve an environmentally friendly plant which could provide a basis for future development.
In the second construction stage, it is planned to double the equipment described above so that, eventually, it will be possible to handle up to 10 million tonnes per year of bulk material. This is the second time that ThyssenKrupp Fördertechnik have been able to convince a Russian client in the new Ust Luga port of their technical competence, efficiency and performance and therefore be awarded the contract.
