(480b) Assessment of Effects of Flow Enhancers in Pneumatic Conveying of Cohesive Dairy Powders: CFD-DEM Simulation

The aim of this study is to reduce the influence of particle roping on dairy powder deposition and pipeline blockage at pipe sections after a 90^o bend. A CFD-DEM simulation of pneumatic conveying of cohesive dairy powder was performed to study the effect of modifying the design of a pipeline downstream of 90^o bends. The simulation was performed with a commercial discrete element modelling (DEM) software, EDEM^®, coupled with the computational fluid dynamics (CFD) software, FLUENT^®. Fat-filled milk powder (FFMP) fines with average particle size of 94µm was used. The simulation was implemented for different flow enhancers (i.e. inward or outward air jet(s), inner/outer offset, converging nozzle etc.) at the downstream of a 90^o bend. The simulation results show that the use of the flow enhancers can speed up particle rope dispersion, effect de-agglomeration, reduce agglomerated particle deposition, and eliminate the continuous build-up of cohesive particles at bends, horizontal and vertical pipe walls.