Sending drying worries to bed
A mineral processing mill replaced its 80-year-old rotary dryer with a vibrating fluid-bed dryer to produce a more uniform product -- and cut its energy use almost in half.
In 1919, before the invention of the whistling kettle, the traffic light, or even the pop-up tissue box, American Tripoli, a mineral processing mill in Seneca, Mo., installed a new rotary dryer. While the state of technology has come a long way since then, the mill's dryer stayed put, drying a mineral called tripoli for the next 80 years.