Track: Poster Competition (Graduate)

Abstract

Pneumatic conveying of powders is an engineering process used for conveying dry granulate or powder material. It is highly empirical, general models are difficult to establish due to these limitations. In this research it is evaluating the energy efficiency to reduce CAPEX and OPEX. Engineering optimization of a workflow with data from an industrial operation commanded by a Programmable Logic Controller (PLC) with a control algorithm, performing logical, sequential, and timed tasks for plant control. The PLC communicates with a Human-Machine Interface and a Supervision and Control System, which are the means of interaction through a graphical environment interface with the process operator. By applying mathematics to introduce a systematic method to select the gas (air) pressure and flow necessary to operate a pneumatic conveying system in dense phase, it has been shown, on an industrial scale, the feasibility of controlling a conveying system manipulating only two input parameters. This allows operation at pre-determined conveying rates with lower power requirements and OPEX. The same methodology can be explored for several other pneumatic conveying systems.