Pneumatic Conveying for Both Fragile and Abrasive Materials

The world of material handling can be complex, and choosing the right method for your specific needs is crucial. When it comes to delicate items or abrasive materials, pneumatic conveying might seem like an unlikely solution. However, pneumatic conveying systems, when designed and implemented correctly, can effectively handle both fragile and abrasive materials. Let’s delve deeper and explore how this versatile technology conquers these seemingly contradictory challenges.

Can Pneumatic Conveying Handle Fragile Materials?

Yes, contrary to popular belief, pneumatic conveying excels at transporting delicate items like pelletized carbon black, dry breakfast cereals, roasted peanuts, fertilizer pellets, and much more. The type of pneumatic conveying suitable for conveying these types of materials is a process known as dense phase pneumatic conveying, and more specifically, “full line concept” dense phase, which is a process that that does not empty the convey pipe after each transport cycle.  Here’s how it achieves gentle handling:

Precise Control: Modern pneumatic conveying systems offer precise control over air pressure and velocity using devices called “air savers” or “boosters” along the convey pipe, ensuring gentle material handling and minimizing the risk of product breakage.

Eliminate emptying the convey pipe: The filling and emptying of the convey pipe in a conventional dense phase pneumatic conveying process creates higher particle velocities, which can result in particle degradation. The solution is to eliminate this part of the process by starting and stopping the convey cycle with a full convey pipe.

Attention to the details: Pneumatic conveying system design and component selection is critical to minimizing particle breakage. Yes, the details matter. Careful attention to the conveying pipe route and selecting components that ensure smooth flow without leading edges or misalignment are critical to the success of the system.

Can You Convey Abrasive Materials Using Pneumatic Conveying?

Abrasive materials like sand, glass batch, refractory batch, and so on, pose a challenge for many pneumatic transport systems. However, pneumatic conveying can be a surprisingly effective solution when the right approach is taken:

Dense Phase “full line” Conveying: This method uses pressurized air to push a dense plug of material through the pipeline. Since particle-on-convey pipe contact is minimized, wear and tear on both the material and the pipeline itself are significantly reduced. Dense phase conveying can extend pipeline lifespans by up to 10 times compared to dilute phase conveying for abrasive materials.

No Nonsense Pipelines: When full line dense phase systems are utilized, expensive, special wear-resistant pipelines are no longer necessary. Full line concept dense phase systems use standard mild steel schedule 40 pipelines for most materials, or standard schedule 10 stainless steel pipelines for corrosive materials.

Velocity matters:  Designing a system with the appropriate conveying velocity is essential.  Pipe wear is proportional to the velocity…CUBED!  So, making sure the system is designed around the proper velocity is essential to in order to provide a long lasting system that requires little maintenance.

Choosing the Right System

The key to successful pneumatic conveying for both fragile and abrasive materials lies in choosing the right system for your specific needs. Factors like material properties, conveying distance, and capacity all play a crucial role. Here at Dynamic Air, our experienced application engineers will conduct a thorough analysis of your requirements.  And our state-of-the-art testing facility can be employed to demonstrate and confirm the design.  Dynamic Air will recommend the optimal system configuration, based on the following:

Dense Phase vs. Dilute Phase: Dense phase pneumatic conveying is ideal for fragile or abrasive materials or long distance/high rate applications, while dilute phase is better suited for non-abrasive materials, and short distance/low rate applications. We provide custom systems and equipment for 16 different concepts of pneumatic conveying, ensuring that each system is tailored to meet the specific needs of your application.

Velocity and Pressure: Precise control over these factors ensures gentle or powerful material handling depending on your needs.

System Process Design: Designing the correct process is critical to the success of a material handling system.  Dynamic Air is fully capable of providing your complete bulk material process from raw material unloading to the packaging equipment.

Partner with Dynamic Air for Custom Pneumatic Conveying Solutions

Pneumatic conveying systems are powerful tools for handling a wide range of materials, from delicate breakfast cereals to abrasive sand. By utilizing the appropriate technology and system configuration, you can achieve efficient and gentle material handling, even for your most challenging applications. Contact Dynamic Air today to discuss your specific needs and explore how we can tailor a pneumatic conveying solution that optimizes your operations.