BETHLEHEM, PA — A new Single-Trip Bulk Bag Unloader from Flexicon allows rapid, low cost discharging in low headroom areas, and conveying of the material at any angle to downstream processing, storage or packaging equipment.

The unloader relies on the user's forklift or plant hoist to lower single-use bulk bags onto a four-bladed bag piercing knife that cuts the bag bottom from seam-to-seam, promoting complete discharge without the use of flow promotion devices otherwise needed to move material through narrow bag spouts.

The Single-Trip Unloader relies on the bag bottom to self-seal against a thick gasket affixed to the rim of the hopper and to discharge through a wide diameter hole in the center of the gasket, eliminating the cost and additional headroom required for bag spout interfaces used on conventional unloaders of reusable bags. An optional dust plenum, consisting of a hollow hopper rim with interior slots and exterior port vented to a plant dust collection system, is offered as a secondary dust containment measure.

Single-use bags are simply lowered onto the piercing knife, ready to

discharge many times faster, and with less labor, than possible when connecting reusable bags to unloaders.

Compared with reusable bags, many of which are discarded after one use, single-use bags can be less costly to purchase, and reduce the amount of material to be discarded or recycled.

The hopper, which is equipped with a hinged door to access the interior safely, charges the intake adapter of an integral flexible screw conveyor that handles free- and non-free-flowing bulk materials ranging from large pellets to sub-micron powders, including products that pack, cake, seize, smear, fluidize, break apart or separate, with no separation of blended products.

The hopper is also available equipped with intake adapters and rotary airlocks for pneumatic conveying systems, as well as with universal flanged outlets for connection to the user's downstream equipment.

Construction is of stainless steel finished to industrial, food, dairy or pharmaceutical standards, or of carbon steel with durable industrial finish.