Powder and Bulk Solids Case Studies

At Bayer Hungaria’s Nagyigmánd plant, two Piab piFLOW f vacuum conveyors replaced manual movement of 25 kg corn-seed coating-powder bags to equipment 20 m above the floor; Piab reports a requested rate of 350 kg/h and a maximum achieved rate of 440 kg/h after commissioning.

Repco replaced a bucket elevator between mixing and packaging with a Coperion K-Tron Omniveyor dense-phase pressure-vessel system after full-scale trials at Kansas State University’s Bulk Solids Innovation Center demonstrated transfer of representative premixes without the segregation seen in the old process.

Coperion K-Tron developed two mobile batch-feeding stations for Johnson Matthey that return to a docking point for vacuum refill, then move between mixers; the arrangement solved a headroom constraint by integrating the receiver function into the feeder hopper and placing filtration in the return line.

Solukon’s SFM-PCU transfers recovered metal powder from a sensor-monitored pickup point through an integrated vacuum-conveying line into a monitored 50 L container, creating a closed handoff from depowdering toward recycling without establishing a universal exposure or explosion-protection rating.

Pfizer’s HighCon facility in Freiburg is a highly automated high-containment oral-solid-dose plant that connects powder handling, production and packaging; Pfizer reported a €300 million investment and capacity for up to seven billion additional tablets and capsules when the plant opened in May 2022.