Material Handling and Moisture Reduction Solution Gets Job Done

Schenck Process (Kansas City), a pneumatic conveying, filtration, weighing, and feeding equipment supplier recently collaborated with Flash Rockwell Technologies (Mobile, AL), a non-thermal flash drying system manufacturer, to provide an integrated bulk material handling and moisture reduction system for a major chemical manufacturer.
    Supplied components of the system included a Schenck Process dry material feeder, airlock, convey line, cyclone, filter receiver, and a blower package along with a Flash Rockwell Technologies dryer. The integrated system of feeding, conveying, filtration, and drying technologies were implemented due to the difficult nature of the material being handled. It had a high moisture content (14%+) when exiting the customer’s centrifuge and the customer required a 50% moisture reduction during the conveying process using no ancillary heat source.
    Reducing the moisture of the product became critical to the process and the Flash Rockwell Technologies dryer provided a unique system that differed from others on the market. Most conventional flash dryers use 1200°F temperatures and have efficiencies of 1900 BTUS required per pound of water evaporated. By comparison, Flash Rockwell has developed a newly patented and proprietary flash drying system that uses 200°F temperatures. Flash Rockwell’s drying system uses no external heat sources and is considered a green technology. Conventional drying systems primarily use ancillary fossil fuels and as a result are emission generators themselves. Because of this, conventional drying systems have become more and more strictly controlled, and monitored by federal and state regulators, to the point that permitting to operate is an obstacle. The thermally sensitive flash drying system eases those permitting issues.  
    Utilizing the feeding and conveying technologies of Schenck Process the material was easily fed to the Flash Rockwell dryer where the moisture was removed and then further conveyed to a Schenck Process cyclone and airlock and then eventually packaged for shipment. The material handling and drying system achieved the customer requirement of reducing the material moisture by over 50% with the added environmentally friendly process benefits.
    Potential market applications for this drying process include:
•    Specialty chemicals produced through slurry and moisture evaporation/drying
•    Biochemicals and enzymes
•    PET powder
•    PVC resin
•    Polymer resin powder
•    Pigments
•    Grain
•    Cereal

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