Rock phosphate is a difficult stored material for two reasons at once: it is hygroscopic, so it takes up moisture and cakes, and it is abrasive, so the tooling that shifts it wears fast and the vessel wall cannot take aggressive treatment.
Fertiliser plants, DAP and NPK producers and port storage operators all hit the same wall — literally.
Why air cannons and vibrators stop working. Both rely on the material still behaving as a bulk solid. Once phosphate has caked into a continuous mass keyed to the wall, energy applied at the surface simply does not reach it. Plants often add more aeration and get less flow.
Whipping first, for the wall. The boom goes in through the top hatch and the whipsets clean caked material off the wall as the vessel empties. Because phosphate is abrasive and the wall is often worn, we run a whipset matched to the vessel — enough impact to break the cake, not enough to damage a tired liner.
Cardox CO2 for the cone and outlet. Compacted material at the extraction point is where phosphate genuinely sets like rock. A tube fired through a wall socket delivers a controlled heave — pressure regulated between 1,200 and 3,000 bar to suit the vessel — and breaks the mass in milliseconds without touching the structure.
No moisture added. Water-based methods are self-defeating with a hygroscopic material. Nothing we use introduces moisture.
Related materials we clear on the same sites: urea, potash, gypsum, sulphur and blended fertilisers.
Send the vessel size, the material and how long it has been a problem. We will come back with an approach, a duration and a price.
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