Fuel Efficiency in Dredging Industry

Dredging is vital to economic and social environment. It plays an important role in construction and maintenance of navigation channels for the safe passage of boats and ships, beach nourishment, land reclamation, contaminant remediation, flood prevention, pet extraction and so on.

Energy conservation in the field is the need now because of sharp rise in fuel prices and concerns of shortages.

Dredge ball joint, a pipe coupling component, used for providing flexibility to the pipe line for transporting slurry or fluids during dredging operations, can be energy efficient and environmental friendly. Ever since it has been made, there has been immense development in its design in terms of improving productivity, materials selection, flow, reducing cost, making it environmental friendly as more as possible for having long term benefits.

Dredge Yard, one of the world leaders in dredging and mining technology, has revived one of the designs of past which was not given high importance and no serious CFD studies.

In the Western Dredging Association (WEDA) and Texas University’s Dredging Summit and Expo 2014 that took place in Toronto 2014, Dredge Yard presented two solutions for the inflexibility of the dredge ball joint and for the blockage of the flow.

To solve the inflexibility of the ball joint that occurs due to the rust weld that follows after rusty surfaces, a new design called bearing ball joint has been introduced to the market. This dredge component is featured with additional bearing liners allowing the ball joint to move easier and to have less friction against tilting moments.

For the blockage of the flow that is created by the ball joint when it is tilted up to its maximum bend angle, has been presented a new design having a concave ball liner that allows the mixture to flow easier and have no blockage.
Blockage of the mixture results in local increase of flow speed that has a positive effect in pressure drop.

This new ball joint is producing less friction than conventional ball joint and is saving fuel for the entire dredge operation as the most power is consumed by discharging mixture over the dredge pipe line.