Bulk material handling
Coal Gallery Conveyor
HPS Fabrications supplies the structural steel for an enclosed conveyor gallery roughly a mile long, carrying coal from a Lake Erie dock to a power plant in southeast Michigan. The gallery is being rebuilt in ten segments, one a year, so the plant keeps running throughout. Four segments are complete.
- ~1 mileGallery lengthDock to plant
- 10SegmentsFour complete
- 1 / yearReplacement ratePlant stays in service
| Sector | Bulk material handling |
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A mile of steel, rebuilt while it runs
Coal comes off a Lake Erie dock and travels roughly a mile to the plant inside an enclosed conveyor gallery. The structure is decades old and is being replaced.
It is being replaced ten segments at a time, one segment a year, because the plant cannot be shut down to do it in one go. Four are complete.
Why the schedule is the engineering problem
Most of the difficulty on a job like this is not the steel. It is that each segment has to arrive finished, coated and correct inside a window that was fixed long before the order landed, and it has to mate with a section built years earlier to drawings that have to still mean the same thing.
That is a programme, not an order. It suits a fabricator with engineering in house and one that will still be here in year eight.
Related bulk handling work
The same combination of long structural scopes, marine exposure and material that has to keep moving is what produced the one of the largest shiploading stations in the world.
More on bulk material handling, or request a quote.
What a job like this actually demands
- Repeatability across years Segment seven has to bolt to segment six, which was built years earlier. The drawings, the fixtures and the process all have to survive that gap.
- Delivery to an outage window A date on this job is not a preference. If the steel is late, the plant either runs without it or does not run.
- Coating that lasts a decade A gallery in this service is not repainted casually. The finish is specified for the exposure, not for the photograph.
- Field fit that works the first time Dimensional control through the build, because a correction at height over water is not a correction, it is a programme delay.
Common questions
Coal Gallery Conveyor: questions buyers ask
What is a conveyor gallery?
The enclosed structure a long conveyor runs inside. It carries the belt, the idlers and the walkway, keeps the material out of the weather and the weather off the material, and spans between towers.
Why replace it a segment at a time?
Because the plant cannot stop. Each segment is fabricated and delivered to suit one outage window, and the rest of the run keeps working while that section is swapped.
Who is the customer?
The general contractor running the programme. We supply the structural steel; they own the site relationship and the installation.
Can you do this kind of work on our site?
Yes. Long structural steel scopes delivered in sequence over years are what the shop and the engineering division are set up for. Tell us the constraint, whether that is outage windows, crane access or span, and we will work backwards from it.
Talk to us about a bulk material handling project.
Send a print or describe the problem. Either works.
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