Fluid-dynamical parameters control for atomized slip pneumatic conveying

Abstract

Paper presented at the 7th International Conference on Heat Transfer, Fluid Mechanics and Thermodynamics, Turkey, 19-21 July, 2010.

One of the most important problems in ceramic industrial processes is the atomized slip conveying. Currently conveyor belts pick up the material from the bottom of spray dryer and they rise up it to stocking silos. By conveyor belts, the atomized slip crosses the working environment, so fine particles spread out causing dust pollution and generating dangers for workers' health (silicosis). The paper describes an innovative atomized slip pneumatic conveying to solve this problem. The software simulator "TPSimWin" is able to foresee thermo-hygrometric and fluid-dynamical parameters that give the characteristics request by the specific working process. The attention of this paper will be focused on fluid­-dynamical characteristics of the pneumatic conveying: both solid maximum conveying speed and speed gradient (i.e. the variation of solid's speed, in m/s, for unit length of pipe), need to be limited to guarantee wholeness of product. So the TPSimWin Software gives the necessary solid dynamic information to design correctly the pneumatic conveying plant. The outputs it gives are diagrams that show, step by step along the pipeline, the behaviour of air speed, solid speed, solid speed gradient and air pressure. The main goal of this paper is to introduce an innovative solution for the transport of atomized slip, taking in consideration the critical problem of material degradation and showing a solution to solve it. A method to ensure and to monitor thermo-hygrometric characteristics will be described in a second following paper.