At thecoal face

coal handlingsystems andtechnologies

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E-Crane Worldwide is a modern, state-of-the-art engineering andheavy equipment construction company, based in Adegem,Belgium and with subsidiary companies for sales management,technical support and service in The Netherlands (E-CraneInternational Europe) and Ohio, USA (E-Crane InternationalUSA). E-Crane Worldwide develops turnkey material handlingsolutions with engineering services, equipment manufacturing,erection, operator/maintenance training and custom-tailoredongoing service programmes for its clients.

EQUIPMENT MANUFACTURED

The standard E-Crane product line consists of five series ofbalanced hydraulic cranes (E-Cranes): 700 Series, 1000 Series,1500 Series, 2000 Series, and 3000 Series. The E-Crane is a trulyrevolutionary material handling machine as its main designfeature is a parallelogram style boom configuration which allowsthe machine to be in near perfect balance throughout the dutycycle.

The E-Crane is specifically designed for barge unloadingprocesses. Anything from coal to limestone to fertilizer to scrapsteel can be handled. The E-Crane is a truly versatile machine inthat it can easily switch between commodities and still offer thehigh production required at many ports and industrial facilities.

Half of the near 20 E-Cranes in operation today in North and

South America are in the power sector. The E-Crane is a perfectsolution for power plants because of the versatility to handleboth the fuel for the plant and the other materials needed forair quality control processes. American Electric Power is thecompany’s largest customer, along with other US-based utilitiessuch as Southern Company, Power South, Ohio Valley ElectricCorp, and Cleco, amongst others. The US inland waterways is byfar the most populated area for E-Cranes as there are manydifferent ports and stevedoring facilities that desire a highproduction machine with high reliability and low reoccurringmaintenance costs. Terminal management firms such as KinderMorgan have realized the advantages of the E-Crane versusother more traditional pieces of equipment.

The E-Crane is placed firmly between production lineexcavators (or material handlers) and large scale dedicatedunloading structures. Even the smaller E-Cranes offer muchmore unloading capacity than the standard excavator. The largerE-Cranes can compete with dedication systems in terms ofproduction and come in at only a fraction of the installed costwith even less annual maintenance costs. The E-Crane productline is rated for barge offloading from 500tph (tonnes per hour)to 2,000tph.

E-Crane promotes a ‘turnkey’ style approach to maintain acompetitive advantage in the marketplace. It now offers its

E-Crane equipment remains popular in the coal handling arena

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customers complete bargeoffloading solutions includinghoppers, feeders, bargepositioning systems, and evenfloating solutions mounted ondeck barges. It uses its expertisein barge offloading to design themost efficient systems so itscustomers can get as much outof their machines as possible.E-Crane’s customers are satisfiedas well since this eliminates muchof the headache of procurementand project management thatgoes into these types of projects.

In recent years E-Crane hasspent a lot of resourcesdeveloping its customer servicedepartment. ECI–USA has madeinvestments in more warehousespace and increased inventoryalong with additional field serviceengineers. It now has more than95% of all spare parts for itscustomers on hand in itswarehouse and its increased fieldservice staff has secured fullmaintenance contracts with manyof our customers. E-Crane alsooffers a means of remotetroubleshooting via securecellular connection with itscustomers who demand minimal downtime.

THE EQUILIBRIUM DESIGN

The ‘E’ in E-Crane stands for Equilibrium. The E-Crane design isbased on an ingenious parallelogram-style boom that provides adirect mechanical connection between the counterweight andthe load. This unique four-bar mechanism system ensures thatthe E-Crane remains in near perfect balance throughout itsworking range. Compared to conventional cranes that requireas much as 80% of their available energy just to move the boom,stick, and grab, the E-Crane makes gravity work for you insteadof against you, reducing horsepower requirements and powerconsumption by up to 50% and significantly reducingmaintenance and operating costs.

The E-Crane series offers models with up to 50 tonnes duty

cycle capacity due to their movable counterweight and fixedparallelogram linkage as well as up to 150ft/50m of horizontaland up to 100ft/30m reach below grade. Its modular designallows each E-Crane to be tailor-made to the client's specificrequirements.

RECENT TECHNOLOGICAL DEVELOPMENTS

E-Cranes now come with a new, reliable and user-friendlycontrol system called the EMM, or Electronic Machine Manager.This built in system is a huge innovation in data collectiontechnology, and allows for real time data collection of thingssuch as running time, how many times the E-Crane hits a faultwhile in operation, whether there is an overload or overheat,and more. Some even stream live, real--time video of theE-Crane while in operation.