(83a) A Basic Investigation to Pneumatic Conveyance of Solid Particles in Pipes

A basic investigation in an attempt to bring more light in the intricate process of pneumatic conveying of bulk materials is part of this paper. Due to the fact that a large variety of parameters involved in the convey process act simultaneously, that makes it very difficult to quantify them separately. An approach was done, finding the effect of these parameters by implementing the comparative method. These effects will be discussed and are justified by experimental pneumatic conveying data. These data were obtained in a semi commercial test rig used for measuring the pneumatic conveying properties of new products with the aim to design new conveying systems. The far aim is to develop an intelligent program that could enable the design of pneumatic conveying systems without running complicated tests. A small sample from a mini-plant rig is sufficient to workout the main properties and assume the flow behaviour in anticipation. This is based on the application of dimensionless numbers for various products and properties stored in a database. By means of the laws of similarity for the two-phase flow a safe scale-up is feasible.