A large Southern West Virginia metallurgical coal producer had used stainless steel profile wire curved sieve screens for many years. The screens were used on a H & P sieve box being fed 3/8" minus Deister table refuse coal slurry. They would last 4-6 weeks and would sometimes wear out before they were even turned. This meant an average of ten changes per year at a cost of approximately $600 per change or an average annual cost of $6,000.

A Dur-Elast® urethane curved sieve screen was installed in this same application. This screen lasted one whole year and needed to be turned less often than profile wire. The cost of the Dur-Elast® screen was $950. This meant that in one year there was a screen surface savings of $5,050, not counting the savings in labor and down time to the customer.

A large Alabama coal producer used stainless steel profile wire curved sieve screens on the refuse part of a preparation plant for many years. The size of the coal slurry being fed to the sieve is ½" x 0 at a rate to 100 tons an hour.

With the plant operating at 16 hours a day, the stainless steel screens lasted 420 hours or 26 days. The average cost of a stainless steel profile curved sieve is $365.

A 1mm Dur-Elast® urethane curved sieve was installed in the same sieve bin working under like condition. The Dur-Elast® urethane panel lasted 2,992-1/4 hours, with the plant operating at 16 hours a day. The screen lasted 181 days or 6.9 times longer.

The total cost of stainless steel profile curved sieve screens for one year was $4,380 ($365 each x 12 changes).

The Dur-Elast® urethane screens panel and frame cost was $950 plus only one (1) change a year at a cost of $550. The total yearly cost of the Dur-Elast® urethane system was $1,500.

The customer received a savings of $2,880 in one (1) year just on screen media for this one sieve bin. We did not factor in the savings that they realized on labor or lost production costs.