The Influence of Thermal Drying Techniques on Bulk Material Flow Properties.

It is common practice to analyse the flow properties of a bulk material sample for a range of Moisture Contents (MC). It can also be quite common that the material supplied requires 'drying' to analyse moisture contents at lower values than what may be supplied by the client. This paper investigates the influence of thermal drying techniques on the flow properties of bulk materials. The chosen drying techniques are Air-Drying (AD), drying at ambient temperature and Oven-Drying (OD), drying using an oven at 105 °C. The flow properties of three bulk material samples are considered with each sample compared at the same MC after the drying technique has been undertaken. Each bulk material sample also has baseline testing undertaken at the As-Supplied (AS) condition. To analyse the effects of thermal drying on bulk material flow properties, a case study is also presented to consider the anticipated changes to outlet dimensions for a funnel flow bin design. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]