Solid fuel boiler/incinerator fuel feeder

Claim 1

Apparatus for feeding a metered flow of solid fuel to a boiler/incinerator operation, said apparatus comprising an upright pair of spaced apart walls constituting respective front and rear hopper defining boundaries, and a pair of belt conveyors each traversing an endless travel course and having upstanding flight members extending crosswise thereon, said conveyors being arranged in divergently upwardly inclined dispositions, each conveyor having an upper elongated straight run course defining with that of the other opposed hopper end boundaries, said front, rear and end boundaries defining a hopper chamber for holding a collection of solid waste fuel therein, the upper straight run course of each conveyor traveling from bottom to top in said hopper chamber and being operable to transport material from the bottom of a stock of solid waste contained in said chamber, each conveyor transiting a turnaround course at the top of the hopper and discharging the material transported thereby through an associated hopper discharge opening adjacent said turnaround course, and each conveyor having a lower straight run course and a lower turnaround course at the bottom of the hopper, the lower turnaround courses of said conveyors being in close spaced adjacency one with the other, and separate variable speed drive motors connected to each of said conveyors for separating and independently variably controlling the speed of each of said conveyors and correspondingly the rate at which solid waste is transported by a conveyor to its associated hopper discharge opening independently of the rate of which the other conveyor transports waste from said hopper.