PRESSURE-DROP AND SLUG VELOCITY IN LOW-VELOCITY PNEUMATIC CONVEYING OF BULK SOLIDS

Low-velocity slug flow pneumatic conveying is being applied increasing ly in industry and to a wide range of bulk solid materials. However, t o date, most investigations have focused on bulk solid materials with regular shape (e.g. plastic pellets, wheal) and very little work has b een undertaken with irregular-shaped materials (e.g. muesli, maize ger m). In this paper, a new test-design procedure is presented. Based on particle properties and data from a simple vertical test chamber, the pressure drop and slug velocity in low-velocity slug flow can be predi cted accurately in large-scale systems. This procedure can be applied to bulk solid materials with regular, irregular and/or unusual physica l properties (e.g. different shape, density, size and size distributio n), as long as they are good candidates for this mode of pneumatic con veying. (C) 1997 Elsevier Science S.A.