Bulk handling is a mature industry, after all goods have been stored and handled in quantity for thousands of years. However, the requirement of modern civilisation places much higher demands on the technology than in historical times. Great strides have been made in the theory of particulate solids to match this need, indeed it would appear that there is a satisfactory answer to any requirement in solids handling. The inescapable fact remains that plants handling bulk solids often encounter many operating problems and many fall far short of achieving optimum performance. This is not usually the result of any failure of the mechanical or chemical engineering but because the physical properties of the bulk material have not been properly accommodated by the installed equipment. How appropriate is the remark: - ‘We thought the plant was well made until we started commissioning’.
A 2- in foresight is worth a PhD in hindsight, but foresight requires a degree of experience to understand the potential difficulties that may arise. Some courage is also called for, to resist the pressures of time and cost that surround many projects and stick out for conducting due technical diligence in performance assessment. A flow audit that recognises the liabilities of non-performance will highlight the respective importance of key sections in the flow route, unrelated to their capital value that tends to influence the amount of attention directed to its design and selection.
Retrofit is another area that often operates under extreme pressure. Difficulties exposed at commissioning that delay production impose a high stress on all parties to secure a resolution. Unfortunately, skills lacking at the initial stage of a project may not be readily available later. Brute force solutions tend to be crude, expensive and not always very effective, sometimes leading to compromise situations. It does happen that intractable problems become accepted as inevitable and long running impediments to production or detractions from the product quality remain inherent to the operation.
Somewhere out there may be the answer to these awkward problems. The web has enormous scope for making contact with people of all disciplines and experience. Perhaps they have had similar problems and managed to find an answer or have the skill to suggest a practical or theoretical approach. Lyn Bates has been working in solids handling for many years and dealt with virtually all industries that handle bulk material. He is to host a column titled ‘Ask Lyn’, which is a platform for posing queries from users that are experiencing problems in solids storage and handling or looking for advise when contemplating a project.
Lyn Bates
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observations on material flow characteristics
