Pneumatic conveyors: what materials do they handle?
Bulk handling materials technology
Pneumatic conveyors: meaning and wich materials can be handled
Pneumatic conveyors allow bulk materials to be handled within a closed pipe system by means of a gas (usually compressed air or nitrogen).
Pneumatic conveyors are used primarily for granules and powders. This type of conveyor is extremely flexible in terms of routing and length of the pipeline.
Working of pneumatic conveyors
The material is loaded onto a pressure vessel, where high pressure leads the material inside the conveying line to its destination.
The system is totally enclosed within a pipeline, where differences in pressure on either side cause a flow of product.
This pressure differential can be made via increasing or decreasing the pressure on either side of the tube.
Dense phase pneumatic conveying vs. dilute phase pneumatic conveying
With dense phase conveying, comparing to dilute phase, the flow of air is not around each particle.
Instead, granular agglomerates (in the shape of dunes) and plugs are pushed by compressed air at a low velocity and a higher pressure through the conveying pipe.
Pneumatic vacuum conveyor: fields of application
The main application fields of pneumatic conveyors are feeding operations of:
- mixers;
- reactors;
- packaging machines;
- every similar application that requires to handle powders, granules, flakes, and dry bulk.
Pneumatic conveyors: advantages
Pneumatic conveyors main features:
- a simple construction;
- low initial costs;
- require little space (pneumatic conveyors have much fewer moving parts than other conventional conveying systems);
- prevent the dispersion of dust;
- best suited for small, dry, low bulk density products (such as wheat, sugar, cement powder, sands, and other aggregates) but also heavy bulk density products, abrasives (salt and the like, blended products, plastic pellets, and other fragile materials).
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