Scale-up Procedures for Pneumatic Conveying Design

A survey of literature shows that,although scaling up of test rig data is considered widely to be one of the most important stages of pneumatic conveying design,to data no general method was developed for the reliable and accurate scale-up of test rig data to full-scale installations.The main reason is that the previous procedures don't take into account the location and/or number of bends and also the relatively short straight sections of pipe that are used commonly in industry.A simple configuration of pipe is employed,compriseing two long and one short straight section of pipe and two bends.Based on the measured pressures along the two long straight sections of pipe,the exponents in the empirical formulae are determined for the prediction of pressure drop caused by bends and straight sections of pipe.The results show that these formulae are able to predict accurately not only the pressure drop caused by both bends and straight sections of pipe at different locations,but also the total pipeline air pressure drop in pipelines of different length,diameter,bend number and step.