Conveying fluidizable materials
Building on the information in his first four series of columns, Paul E. Solt, a private consultant with more than 43 years experience installing and troubleshooting pneumatic conveying systems, presents a fifth series, on the general application of pneumatic conveying. In a separate section, Solt also answers your pneumatic conveying questions.
In this eighth column on the general application of pneumatic conveying, we'll apply information from previous columns to discussing equipment for handling fluidizable material. This material falls into one of the three general categories of dry bulk materials, the other two being free-flowing [granular] and nonfree-flowing [cohesive, stringy, and lumpy] materials. Fluidizable material has unique handling characteristics that not only provide some processing advantages but allow the material to be pneumatically conveyed in equipment other than pneumatic pipelines.