High Speed Visualization of Pneumatic Conveying of Materials in Bypass System

Dense phase pneumatic conveying is preferable over dilute phase conveying in many industries as lower transport velocities are beneficial due to reduced attrition of the particles and reduced wear. However, dense phase conveying is critically dependent on the physical properties of the materials to be conveyed. For many materials which are either erosive or fragile, they do not exhibit the physical properties required to be conveyed reliably in a low velocity, dense phase flow regime. This can be serious problem in the food, chemical and pharmaceutical industries. One satisfactory approach which has been widely applied is the use of bypass systems. Bypass pneumatic conveying systems provide the capacity of transporting some materials that are not naturally suitable for dense phase flow. Bypass pneumatic conveying systems also provide a passive capability to reduce minimum particulate transport velocities. In this study, pneumatic conveying experiments were carried out in a 79 mm diameter main pipe with a 27 mm inner diameter bypass pipe with orifice plate flute arrangement. Alumina, fly ash and sand were conveyed in the tests. High speed camera visualization was employed to study the flow regimes of bypass pneumatic transport systems and investigate the mechanism of material blockage inhibition provided by these systems. For alumina and fly ash, it was found that particulate material blockages were inhibited in bypass systems due to the air penetration into the particulate volume as a result of orifice plate airflow resistance. For the bypass pneumatic conveying of sand, the splitting of a long plug into two smaller plugs was observed. One of the primary concerns of bypass system is the wear of the bypass line. Material such as alumina is inherently abrasive by nature. For internal bypass systems, there is limited ability to monitor the state of the inner bypass tube while in operation. The particle velocity in the pipeline has been measured from the high speed video of the flow. The experimental result also showed that the conveying velocity of bypass system is much lower when compared conventional single bore pipelines. Based on the models developed for the assessment of service life of pneumatic conveying pipelines, the thickness loss of the bypass pipe has been estimated. It has been estimated that for a 3mm bypass tube wall thickness, a wear hole is created in approximately 2.5 years for a particle velocity of 3 m/s and 4 months for a particle velocity of 10 m/s.