ArcelorMittal Design Project
Final Report
By Oscar de Lima, Grant Worley, Ryan Byers, Samil Portorreal
Table of Contents:
Page (2) : Mission Statement / Sustainability Definition
Page (3) : House of Quality
Page (4-5) : Design Process
Page (6-7) : Basic Plan
Page (8) : Flow Chart
Page (9-11) : Economics / Cost Analysis
Page (12) : Works Cited
Through-Out : Graphs
Mission Statement / Sustainability Definition:
ArcelorMittal has tasked us with creating a plan to reduce their waste stream to
make their production process a little more environmentally friendly. In particular, the
company wants us to reduce waste by designing a way to reuse and/or recycle one or
more of their largest sources of waste which includes wooden pallets from the delivery
of materials, drums/totes from the delivery of chemicals and fluids, and the refractory
brick from the steelmaking process. By reducing these sources of waste the company
will be making their process more sustainable.
Sustainability in the business world means managing the social, financial, and
environmental costs of the process. Therefore, any process that is sustainable must be
socially acceptable, profitable, and environmentally friendly. Our project is intended to
help reduce one problem without creating another.
While the waste reducing design is a very important part of this process, an
equally important aspect is the economic impact of the design. ArcelorMittal wants us to
reduce their waste, but in an economical and cost effective manner. They want to
reduce their waste without having to spend too much money on something that is not
directly related to their business. Along the same lines, they do not want to branch out
and start selling or creating products with their waste materials. This would take time
and money away from what they are best at which is producing steel.
For our design we chose to focus on the wood pallets from the delivery process.
We chose this source of waste because after brainstorming, we decided that this would
be something that the company could easily change and it would be much less costly to
do so than if they were to try to work with the other waste sources.
House of Quality:
This HoQ shows how the
customer’s needs (left column)
relate to our design’s features
(top center rows)
Design Process:
When we first received this task, our
first step was to decide what material to
focus on. We pick three main criteria, economic, feasible, and simplicity, for the
solutions that could be used for each of the these waste products.
Waste
Wood Pallets Refractory
& other
Brick
Waste
Lumber
Drums &
Totes
Economic
Solution
+
-
-
Feasible
Solution
0
0
-
Simplicity Of
Solution
+
-
-
Material →
Criteria ↓
Results ↓
Sum of +’s
2
0
0
Sum of -’s
0
2
3
total
2
-2
-3
Chart 1
After some research we found out that dealing with the drums and totes would be
an expensive and difficult task, which is also not feasible considering that ArcelorMittal
is a company whose main goal is to earn or minimize cost. Then we looked at the bricks
and found that although they are not as expensive to deal with as the drums and totes,
they are not the cheapest of the three. The solutions for the bricks would require
ArcelorMittal to either ship the 2565 MT of bricks to other companies or have to grind
down the bricks in order to make new ones. Lastly we looked at the wood pallets and
other lumber waste. The solutions for the lumber waste, compared to the solutions for
the other two, were more economically viable, and relatively simple.
After choosing to work with the wood waste, our next step was to choose which
solution would be best. At first we look at wood pallet recycling companies, but after
seeing that the these companies wouldn’t take the other waste wood, and that they
were too vague about how much they would charge to remove the wood pallets. We
tried to get in contact with some of these companies, but we never got a reply.
Considering how little time we had for this project, we choose not to go that route.
Instead we found that it would be a lot easier for ArcelorMittal to invest in an industrial
wood pallet grinder and an industrial wood pellet maker. We chose to use the large
Low RPM Pallet Grinder manufactured by West Salem due to its ability to handle all the
wood waste that is produced by ArcelorMittal. Also it is powerful enough to remove the
staples and nails from the wood, decreasing the amount of manpower that would be
needed to operate this machinery. Furthermore we chose to use the large D400 diesel
powered pellet mill because it is able to all the wood chips that are produced. The
efficiency of these pieces of machinery is so great that they will only need to run for a
few hours a month to deal with all the wood waste. Although it sounds costly, we
figured that ArcelorMittal could break even after a few years of selling/using the wood
pellets they created.
Basic Plan:
Our basic plan for design with the wood pallets is to grind them up and turn them
into wood pellets and sell them. This process will reduce the waste and get the pallets
off the company’s hands. In doing so, our design will use this waste to create a product
that will benefit others outside of the company.
In order to do this, the process will need a few different components. First of all
we need a machine to grind up the wood. This machine had to be fairly large and
expensive due to the massive incoming pallet load each month. Another problem that
we ran into was the nails in the pallets. We could not simply grind up the pallets like
regular wood because the nails would damage the machinery. Through our
brainstorming process we considered adding a magnet to an existing machine in order
to solve this problem. Luckily through research we found a machine that can do that for
us. The Low RPM Pallet Grinder manufactured by West Salem Machinery we found can
handle all of the pallets and the nails. It has the ability to grind up pallets whole and
separate entire nails in the process.
So to begin the process ArcelorMittal simply has to have someone place the
pallets directly into the grinder. This can be done all at once or throughout the month
and it will only take an hour of operation to go through a month’s worth of pallets for the
company.
The next step of the process is to turn the ground up wood into wood pellets.
Wood pellets are useful in a variety of ways including heat, energy, electricity, and
biomass. We figured this would be a much more profitable use for the recycled wood. In
order to do this step of the process we needed another machine to convert the wood to
pellets. What we found was a D400 diesel powered pellet mill. This machine will take
the ground up wood directly and turn it into pellets in a little more time than it took to
break down the pallets.
This comes out to be a twelve hour process and by the end, a month’s worth of
entire wood pallets will be turned into wood pellets that are ready to be sold. These
pellets can be sold to companies, consumers, or even used on site. If ArcelorMittal
chooses to use this on site they can be even more economical by reducing their
electricity, heat, or fuel costs.
Below is a flowchart of how the whole process will look. The process itself is not
very complicated but it will get a bit expensive. The largest expense will be the
machinery because of their complexity and time saving properties. Also it will take up a
pretty good amount of space so the company may have to add a little more room to fit
all of it. However, the fact that these machines are so good means that ArcelorMittal
does not have to add very many new employees to run it. The only additions to
ArcelorMittal’s factories would be a few employees to run and maintain the machines
and possibly additional space for the machines and wood pellets to be stored.
Flow Chart:
⇛
↵
⇙
⇛
Economics / Cost Analysis:
We chose to do this process instead of some of the other ones we had come up
with through brainstorming because we felt that it was probably the most cost efficient.
Although we were not able to get exact prices for everything, because most of the
products we were looking at were industrial equipment and generally those companies
do not put prices on their website, we did find some equipment that was comparable to
the ones we were looking at and could therefore make an estimate. We also had to look
at the labor costs and other factors during our analysis which will be exampled later on
in the report.
First we will focus on the base cost of the machines we want to use. The largest
of the two pieces is called a Low RPM Pallet Grinder manufactured by West Salem
Machinery. We chose this because it was large enough to handle the pallet load and it
remove the nails from the pallets in whole form. Below are some of the specifications for
the two models of this Grinder they produce. Chart (2) We chose to go with the lower
horsepower one as it would take less money to operate the machine however it still can
perform the function we wish. Online we found comparable grinders going for roughly
100 thousand dollars so we assumed that this one would be roughly the same.
According to their website this grinder could grind through all the pallets they used
during a month in one hour of operations. This would mean that the actual operational
cost of the grinder would be very low at perhaps $40-$50 for the one to two people
required to operate the Grinder. We feel that this is the best choice as for the most part
the Grinder will be almost entirely paying for itself when operating because of the low
operational cost.
Chart: From West Salem Machinery website about the Low RPM pallet Grinders
APPROX
DIMENSIONS IN INCHES
MO
HOPPER
DEL
DIMS
L
W
163
51-7/8 X
128-
6HT
105-1/2
7/16
. LBS
ROTOR DIA
ROTO
TYPICAL
H
TIP-TIP
RW
HP RNG
WT
86-
119
12-1/2
37-1/4
40-50
9,693
23/3
-1/2
2
166
77-3/16 X
184-
117-
119
2HT
80-3/16
3/4
7/8
-1/8
12-1/2
61-3/4
60-75
15,291
Graph 2
The next piece of machinery we needed was the pellet maker. We found a pellet mill
from a website called pellet mill outlet which sells a variety of pellet mills. The one most
suited to our needs we found was a large D400 diesel powered pellet mill. The Mill cost
only 10 thousand dollars and can process up to one ton of wood chips an hour. This
combined with the low RPM grinder cost a grand total of 110 thousand dollars.
So now that we have the machines picked out the we need to see how much
they cost to operate. Based on the information we got from ArcelorMittal we estimated
that they need to deal with roughly 400 pallets a month, and at roughly 50 pounds a
pallet, means that they need to do something with 10 tons of pallets. The Pellet mill
would be the slower of the two machines taking roughly 10 hours to process the chips
from the grinder. This would still only come out to roughly $400-$500 for the labor costs
of the machine. We couldn’t find how much fuel the machine uses so we could not
estimate how much it would cost to operate in that respect. It however would not be a
very large amount as it will only be consuming fuel for roughly 10 hours once a month.
Below is a chart and picture of the machine and its specifications.
Model #
Power
Output
Weight
Size
D400
55HP Diesel
1764-2425
lbs/hour
1653/1720 lbs
90” X 25” X 50”
Graph 3
If you add up all these costs and the price that wood pellets can go for on the
free market, which is roughly $300 per ton, you find that they would be making a profit
of roughly 2000 dollars a month. So over one year they would gain 24 thousand dollars
in profit. This means that they could pay off all the machines in only 4 years and then be
making an extra 24 thousand dollars a month. This process is a good for more reasons
than just economic reasons because it also help the environment. Instead of having
these wood pallets being simply thrown away they can be used for something else, in
this case wood pellets which can help heat or power someones home. It may not be the
most environmental way of recycling them but it is far more environmental that simply
throwing them in a landfill. On the topic of landfills our cost analysis is not taking into
account the money that they would be saving by not having to pay a company to
dispose of the pallets. If we were to do that it they would be saving a higher amount of
money making even more economic sense.
Works Cited:
"Hopper Fed Grinders (Low RPM) - West Salem Machinery." WSM. West Salem Machinery,
n.d. Web. 30 Apr. 2015.
"Pellet Mill -Large Diesel." Pellet Mill -Large Diesel. Pellet Mill Outlet, n.d. Web. 30 Apr. 2015.
"40lbs Wood Pellets." Lowes Online. Lowes Corporation, n.d. Web. 30 Apr. 2015.