Process Description

Many companies ship bulk powders and granular material by rail.  The process involves the loading a number of rail cars on a regular basis.  Once the product is loaded, the rail company removes the cars and shuttles them to a legal rail scale to weigh the contents.  This produces a legal weigh ticket for the company to invoice their customers for the contents of the rail cars

A number of major issues exist in the process.  The rail company charges a fee to weigh and produce the legal weigh ticket.  This process can take a number of days during which the company is unable to invoice the customer without the legal weigh ticket.  A final issue remains the accuracy of the weighing.  Rail cars are not weighed empty.  This empty weight, known as the tare weight, is done when the car is built.  This tare weight is then recorded for the car and used in any legal weighing transactions.  However during use and maintenance of the cars, weight can be added to the cars when doing repairs.  In addition the ice and snow in the winter can have the same effect.  The result is that the tare weight of the car will change but will never be updated.  This will affect the actual net weight of the car and can result in less than accurate weights of material in the cars.

Advantages of Legal NTEP Loading of Bulk Rail

1. The company does not have to pay the transaction fees for legal weighing (typically $100-$200 per car).

2. The company can invoice the customer immediately from the legal weight ticket general at their plant for the contents as opposed to waiting a number of days for the rail company to weigh the car and produce the ticket. 

3. The company is confident of the exact amount of product that enters the rail cars is charged to the customer.

4. Eliminates over and under loading of rail cars by filling to an exact known weight.  In truck filling application, trucks exceeding capacity are fined by state authorities.

Features Critical to Application

1. Comptrol’s 47SH Series of Legal Scales are NTEP certified without the upper garner and lower surge so that the customer can install the scale in a situation where there are existing storage bins.  Alternately these bins can be fabricated locally to reduce the installation expense.

2. 47SH Series of Legal Scales incorporate a standard second lower gate for air pressure isolation allowing the scale to feed pneumatic transport systems.

3. NTEP is a USA National Type Certification – Class III/IIIL accepted in all 50 states as legal for trade..

Competitive Advantages.

1. 47SH scales have a compact, open, tubular design to minimize surfaces where material can build up.  This generally improves overall sanitation of the system and lowers maintenance of components due to exposure to material.

2. Design incorporates isolation from pneumatic transport systems to provide reliable weight measurement under any conditions.

3. Optional calibration weight system available to eliminate the need for manually lifting test weights, thus reducing manpower and time to certify and calibrate the scale as well as avoiding accidents.

4. Can be configured to communicate data through Allen Bradley Remote I/O PLC interface.

5. Can be configured to communicate data through a serial communication interface.

6. Capable of remote operation and control.

Target Customer

This product can be used with any customer who ships product using bulk tank cars for powders and/or granular material.

Examples include:

1.  Animal feed and pet food products

2. Cement, sand, calcium carbonate

3. Food Ingredients such a flour, sugar

4. Dry chemicals, dyes, carbon black and fertilizer

Cost Benefits

A simple pay-back calculation can be done using the cost of weighing the rail car multiplied by the number of cars per month to produce a payback period for the investment.

In addition, there is the further benefit of accelerating accounts receivable payments through immediate invoicing of the customer.  The company can also avoid under weight shipments as well as fines for over weight shipments.

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Copyright © 2003 Comptrol Technologies Inc.
Last modified: May 19, 2004