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An application is a job, not a machine.
Each page here takes one job in one industry, explains what makes it difficult, and shows which equipment combinations solve it.
127 published
Application
In cement and lime plants dense phase conveying is chosen to protect the pipe, not the product.
Low velocity means a bend that lasts years rather than months, and that is the whole economic argument at these tonnages.
Application
In chemical production dense phase is chosen for three different reasons, and it pays to know which one applies.
It protects friable crystals, it limits erosion with hard powders, and it keeps a hazardous product in a closed pipe at low velocity.
Application
Feed and grain plants use dense phase where breakage matters and mechanical transfer does not fit.
Kernels and pellets survive a low velocity line far better than a dilute phase one, and the blend stays mixed.
Application
Dense phase is used in pet food to move finished kibble without turning it into fines.
Low velocity keeps the pieces intact, but fat coating smears along the pipe wall and changes the line over weeks.
Application
With abrasive minerals the conveying velocity is the wear budget.
Erosion rises steeply with velocity, so halving the speed buys far more than half the bend life, which is why dense phase is the default for these materials.
Application
In food plants dense phase conveying is chosen to protect the product.
Low velocity keeps coated snacks, instant powders and pre-blended mixes intact, which is worth more than the energy saved.
Application
Angel hair is the reason plastics plants move to dense phase.
At high velocity a pellet sliding along the pipe wall melts at the contact point and leaves a streamer behind; at low velocity it does not.
Application
In a cement or lime plant the collectors run continuously at high dust loads, and filter life is the operating cost.
Mineral dust is abrasive and the air is often hot, which rules out some media and shortens the life of others.
Application
A dust collector in a food plant is a process vessel, not a cleaning device.
It holds the finest, most reactive fraction of the product, and whatever it recovers either goes back into the process or becomes waste with an allergen label.
Application
In grain handling the dust collection system is the primary explosion control, because it removes the fuel before it settles.
Aspiration at the intake pit, the elevator boot and the conveyor heads captures dust where it is generated.
Application
In mineral processing the dust is both an emission and a health hazard, and the capture points are noisy, wet and awkward.
Crushers and screens generate dust in bursts, which a system sized for average flow will not capture.
Application
Not every transfer point can have a filter and a fan, and that is where passive suppression earns its place.
A suppression hopper slows the material and lets the induced air escape through the product rather than carrying dust with it.
Application
Aggregates and cement need different answers at the same loading bay.
Coarse aggregate responds well to suppression and water; cement powder does not tolerate either and needs an enclosed spout with extraction.
Application
In food plants the dust is product, and it is also the explosion hazard, so letting it settle is never the answer.
Suppression at a transfer point reduces the plume but leaves the dust with the product, which is acceptable for a bulk ingredient and not for a hygienic enclosure.
Application
In an open stockyard the wind does most of the dust generation, and the controls have to work without an enclosure.
Stacking height, drop distance and moisture are the three levers available.
Application
Dust-tight bulk bag unloading encloses the untying step: the operator opens the spout inside a cabinet held under slight vacuum by extraction, the spout clamps to a sealed discharge interface, and liners are cut and disposed of without leaving containment.
The required depth — extraction hood, enclosed cabinet or glove-box — follows from the exposure limit of the product, not from the dust you can see.
Application
Loading food powders is a hygiene task as well as a dust task.
The connection between the plant and the vehicle is where contamination enters, and where the powder escapes if the spout is not sealed.
Application
At a grain terminal the loading point generates both the emission and the dust layer that makes the plant dangerous.
What escapes into the air settles on structures, and that layer is the fuel for a secondary explosion.
Application
At a mineral terminal the dust that leaves the loading point leaves the site.
Wind, drop height and fines content decide the plume, and the control has to work in the open rather than in a building.
Application
At a loading point the dust comes from the air the material drags with it, not only from the material.
Enclosing the falling column and extracting the displaced air removes most of the plume; filtering the yard afterwards does not.
Application
In grain handling isolation is what stops a local event from becoming a building loss.
The leg, the filter and the conveyors are all connected, and a deflagration travels between them faster than anyone can react.
Application
In a cement or lime plant isolation matters where the fuel is, not where the mineral is.
The risk travels along the fuel handling ducts, and the connection between fuel equipment and the rest of the plant is the one to examine.
Application
In chemical plants isolation has to work without spoiling the product.
Chemical barriers inject suppressant into the duct, which is effective and often unacceptable for a high purity product, so the geometry has to allow a mechanical device instead.
Application
In fuel preparation everything is connected, which is why isolation is designed with the system rather than added to it.
Mill, classifier, filter and silo form one path, and an event anywhere in it travels.
Nobody buys a rotary valve. They buy a way to get flour out of a silo without losing air pressure.
Equipment catalogues are organised by machine, because that is how machines are built and sold. Plants are organised by job, because that is how problems arrive. Somebody has to unload a tanker, feed a press, keep a baghouse from blinding or stop dust escaping at a transfer point.
This section follows the second order. Each page names a job, in a named industry, and works from the duty to the equipment.
A conveying line sized for the average rate fails at the peak. A feeder sized for the nominal recipe cannot hold tolerance at the smallest addition. The first question on any application page is therefore the range, not the figure: the lowest rate, the highest rate, and how often each occurs.
Most jobs need a chain, and the weakest link decides the result. A vacuum receiver that cannot clean its filter will starve the feeder below it, whatever the feeder is capable of. A silo that bridges makes the discharge equipment irrelevant.
Where a page recommends equipment, it names the interface as well: what has to be true upstream and downstream for the machine to perform as specified.
The same job has different constraints in different industries. Bulk bag discharge in a food plant has to be cleanable and allergen-segregated. In a cement works, the same job is about wear and dust. In pharmaceuticals, it is about containment and validation.
That is why the pages are written by job and industry together, rather than by job alone.
If you know the job, start here and follow the links into the technologies it uses. If you know the material, start from the material pages and arrive at the same place from the other side. If you know the machine, the technology pages are the way in.
Every application page carries the same structure: the problem as operators describe it, the result a good design delivers, how the job is normally arranged, the factors that decide the selection, and the failure modes that show up when one of them was missed.
They do not size equipment. Sizing needs measured material properties, the real duty cycle and the plant layout, and it belongs with the supplier who will stand behind the result.
What they do is shorten the distance between a problem and the right question. Most bad installations are not bad machines; they are machines selected against the wrong duty, or installed without the condition that made them work in the reference plant.
Most arguments between a plant and a supplier come from a duty that was never written down properly. Five lines prevent them.
Dilute phase conveying carries material suspended in air and needs a velocity above the saltation point, which for most powders puts it in the range of roughly fifteen to thirty metres per second. Dense phase moves material as slugs at a fraction of that, typically single digits.
The difference is not a preference. High velocity breaks fragile product and erodes bends; low velocity needs more pressure and a vessel rather than a blower. Fragile or abrasive material pushes the choice towards dense phase, long distances and high rates towards dilute.
A volumetric feeder meters a volume and assumes a density. A gravimetric feeder weighs, and therefore holds tolerance when the density changes. Wherever the recipe tolerance is tighter than the density variation of the material, the question is already answered.
Capture happens at the source or it does not happen. Extraction volume follows the open area and the face velocity needed to hold dust in, not the size of the machine, and a hood that is too far away cannot be fixed with a bigger fan.
Across every job on this site, the same four causes account for most of what goes wrong after commissioning.
None of these is exotic, and all four are cheap to prevent at the specification stage and expensive to fix afterwards. Each application page names the ones that apply to that job.
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