A reclaimer is a large machine used in bulk material handling

Bulk material handling

Bulk material handling is an engineering field that is centered around the design of equipment used for the handling of dry materials such as ores, coal, cereals, wood chips, sand, gravel and stone in loose bulk form...

 applications. A reclaimer's function is to recover bulk material such as ores and cereals from a stockpile

Stockpile

A stockpile is a pile or storage location for bulk materials, forming part of the bulk material handling process.Stockpiles are used in many different areas, such as in a port, refinery or manufacturing facility. The stockpile is normally created by a stacker. A reclaimer is used to recover the...

. A stacker

Stacker

A stacker is a large machine used in bulk material handling. Its function is to pile bulk material such as limestone, ores and cereals on to a stockpile. A reclaimer can be used to recover the material....

 is used to stack the material.

Reclaimers are volumetric machines and are rated in m³/h (cubic meters per hour) for capacity, which is often converted to t/h (tonnes per hour) based on the average bulk density of the material being reclaimed. Reclaimers normally travel on a rail between stockpiles in the stockyard. A bucket wheel reclaimer can typically move in three directions: horizontally along the rail; vertically by "luffing" its boom and rotationally by slewing its boom. Reclaimers are generally electrically powered by means of a trailing cable.

Reclaimer types

Bucket wheel reclaimers use "bucket wheels" for removing material from the pile they are reclaiming. Scraper reclaimers use a series of scrapers on a chain to reclaim the material.

The reclaimer structure can be of a number of types, including portal and bridge. Reclaimers are named according to this type, such as "Bridge reclaimer". Portal and bridge reclaimers can both use either bucket wheels or scrapers to reclaim the product. Bridge type reclaimers blend the stacked product as it is reclaimed.

Control systems

Stackers and Reclaimers were originally manually-controlled manned machines with no remote control. Modern machines are typically fully automated with their parameters (for stacking or reclaiming) remotely set. Some older reclaimers may still be manually controlled, as reclaiming is more difficult to automate than stacking because the automatic detection of pile edges is complicated by different environmental conditions and different bulk materials.