Experimental and DEM study of flow behaviour of microcrystalline cellulose powders mix from conical silos
Santosh K. BARIK, Chetan M. PATEL, V.N. LAD
Abstract. Hoppers and silos play an essential role in industries for the transportation and storage of materials. In this work, we examine both experimental and discrete element method (DEM) to study the microcrystalline cellulose (MCC) powder flow from two conical silos. In the conical silos with 60° and 80° angles, we conducted experiments on bidisperse and tridisperse MCC particles. Experiments were conducted by neglecting the effect of air. This study investigates the impact of mixture composition on flow rates, average particle velocity, and segregation. The numerical analysis is performed by DEM and is validated with the experimental results. The DEM parameters were taken from the previous literature. The results analyzed include mass discharge rate (MFR), flow dynamics (velocity profile across axial directions), and particle segregation. The results indicate that the mixture’s fine percentage and number of components significantly determine its flow behavior. The DEM MFR findings were similar to those obtained from the experiments. The DEM MFR findings were more accurate for ternary mixtures than those of the binary mixtures. The fines average velocity is more than that of larger particles from the discharge initiation till around half of the material discharges. From this DEM study, it is observed that particle segregation takes place for mixtures comprising varying particle sizes in a conical silo. The effect of segregation is more when the mixture contains fewer fines. The intensity of segregation computed by DEM is higher in the case of binary mixtures than in ternary mixtures. The extent of segregation was observed more in the 60° silo than in the 80° silo. The segregation can be reduced by increasing the fine mass fraction in a mix and reducing the particle size difference. The DEM method can help obtain data where experiment findings are complex. The DEM software used named as LIGGGHTS has the advantage of being an open-source software. Particle systems with more than 1 × 108 particles can require computational time for weeks on a supercomputer.
Keywords
Conical Silo, Microcrystalline Cellulose, DEM, LIGGGHTS, Mass Flow Rate, Average Velocity, Segregation
Published online 3/1/2025, 10 pages
Copyright © 2025 by the author(s)
Published under license by Materials Research Forum LLC., Millersville PA, USA
Citation: Santosh K. BARIK, Chetan M. PATEL, V.N. LAD, Experimental and DEM study of flow behaviour of microcrystalline cellulose powders mix from conical silos, Materials Research Proceedings, Vol. 49, pp 84-93, 2025
DOI: https://doi.org/10.21741/9781644903438-9
The article was published as article 9 of the book Mechanical Engineering for Sustainable Development
Content from this work may be used under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 license. Any further distribution of this work must maintain attribution to the author(s) and the title of the work, journal citation and DOI.
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