Continental technology is being used in a flood prevention project in Machida, Tokyo. The city is building an underground catch basin that can hold up to 150 000 cubic metres of water to prevent the flooding of residential areas which are increasingly being built over rivers and streams.
Continental is supplying a special conveyor belt that can be used to transport the material from the excavation of the collecting basin safely, cleanly and quietly.
To build the basin – 20 metres deep, 190 metres long and 90 metres wide – thousands of tons of earth and bulk material had first to be excavated and transported out of the huge pit. In December 2020, the installation of a Sicon pouch conveyor belt with a length of more than 1 500 metres into the steel structure of the plant was completed. The installation, at over 750 metres long starts operation shortly.
The 280 tons of material excavated every hour is transported on the conveyor belt at a speed of 1.4 seconds per metre across the residential area to a nearby main street, where it is discharged onto trucks.
“The Sicon conveyor belt is a closed system from the feeding point to the discharging point. It can negotiate curves of up to 180 degrees, making it extremely flexible when routing the line and adaptable to any environment. Corners and edges can therefore be bypassed without additional transfer points – curve radii of less than one metre can be achieved,” explains Gabriele Hennig-Juman from Continental Sales for Conveying Solutions in the Asia-Pacific region.
By using a snaking route, the belt conveyor is also able to overcome large differences in height in a very tight space.
A low-noise, no-dust and low-emission transport solution
The belt is manufactured in Northeim (Germany) and then shipped to Japan. The contractors on site are the local Japanese-German joint venture of Continental “Bando-Scholtz” and Furukawa Industrial Machinery Systems, a specialist in Japan in steel construction and industrial equipment, which jointly coordinates and carries out all work for the end customer – the Tokyo Metropolitan.
An international service team from Continental and Bando Chemicals provides on-site support for the assembly and splicing of the belt and the commissioning of the system. “The pouch conveyor belt meets particularly demanding requirements in terms of cost-effectiveness and environmental compatibility. This reliable and clean transport solution takes into account both ecological aspects and preservation of the quality of life for local people,” says Masaaki Ogino, CEO of the Bando-Scholtz Corporation.
Without the conveyor system, countless trucks would have to drive through the residential area to the construction site over a period of months, resulting in a greater CO2 footprint and more noise pollution, as well as potentially increasing the risk of traffic accidents in this restricted space.
The no-noise and low-dust transportation of the excavation material using a pouch belt is therefore an effective alternative method of transport.
