(462b) Industrial Needs in Solids Handling

Methods to design and troubleshoot industrial facilities handling bulk solids have seen limited practical improvement in the past 40 years. Techniques to engineer particulate products for desired attributes are still tedious and success is not guaranteed. Notable progress has been made via the advancement of automated powder flowability test equipment and mathematic modeling, but direct conversion of the results of such work to explicit solutions is rare. Many routine problems still require trial and error or empirical solutions.

This paper will review the realistic “state of the art” of solids handling technology and highlight important problems for which empirical testing is still the only, or primary, means of designing new equipment or solving problems in the field. These problems include the prediction of pneumatic conveying behavior; cohesion, wall friction and adhesion; caking; loss-in-weight feeder performance; heat transfer; grinding; and solids mixing. Comments will be provided on how these situations are addressed currently, the practical ramifications, and what may be required to make improvements.