An Environmental facility on the southside of Indianapolis draws gases off the large Landfill next door. They then filter, clean and dry the gas and then sells they turn around and sell the flammable gas to Utility companies.
Our first call came in to help them with a pilot bearing replacement in the bottom of a tank that holds a mixer blade in place that mixes a solution that scrubs the methane gas to make it cleaner before it is sent to their customer as fuel. Horner’s Field Service Technicians on site discovered a lot of problems going on. The pilot bearing is housed in a strange looking four-legged housing, and the bearing is made of carbon fiber. The bearing’s allowable tolerances side to side could not be achieved due to the tank not being level on top and it was also determined that the mixer shaft was bent.
There is a large assembly that sits on top of the tank which comes down through the tank until it rests on the bearing. Horner Machining Services did an excellent job straightening out the shaft for us. The next challenge was to get the tank level! Horner Field Service added material to the top and bottom of the tank and then re-machined the material.
This was also our biggest job to date using a Loctite product. We used 60 five-gallon buckets
of deep pour grout from Loctite to fill the area under the tank base to provide stability.
Many nights and weekends went into this job…to date, we have 500-600 man hours
with Horner Field Service, Machining Services, Fan and Fabrication, Motor Repair, and
Coatings all involved. This will be a job to remember as almost all of us in Field Service had
our hands in it at some point. Everyone who had a part in this job made it a success after a
significant amount of problem solving and frustration!
