Shaping the Future of Pneumatic Conveying Research

Thirty-three years ago this year was the first time I came into contact with pneumatic conveying. At that time I was a final-year undergraduate student completing my mechanical engineering degree. I was fortunate to be sponsored by a major automotive company and hence most of my time working in industry had been on projects focused on diesel fuel injection equipment for compression ignition engines. While these projects were interesting, I had decided that for my final-year thesis I should gain experience in a different area of engineering. A significant research area for the department at university was powder handling and so it was I chose to work on pneumatic conveying.
    
The project focused on an investigation into acceleration length and acceleration pressure drop associated with the initial entrainment of particulates when fed into a pneumatic conveying system. Little did I realize that this project would in fact change the direction of my whole career.
    
After graduating, I worked in research and development of high-pressure fuel injection systems for about two years which I enjoyed very much. However, a chance discussion led to an opportunity to undertake a PhD while working with professor David Mills and the UK Department of Trade and Industry to produce a design guide for pneumatic conveying. The emphasis for this work was to translate fundamental research into practical design advice to improve the operation and reliability of industrial systems.
    
This was a fantastic opportunity, not only to undertake excellent fundamental research, but also to work with the 20 industrial companies who had signed up to support and work on this project. The outcome was the Pneumatic Conveying Design Guide with which many of you are familiar. This was a fantastic experience for a young engineer and provided me with extensive practical and research experience and a range of industrial contacts, many of whom became wonderful friends.
    
A significant challenge for pneumatic conveying is that one cannot see what is going on in the pipeline. This makes troubleshooting systems particularly challenging. In addition, the complexity of gas-solid flow in pipelines is often underestimated and theoretical approaches to modeling these systems is particularly difficult, especially in non-suspension flow. At Newcastle, our team has made significant headway in understanding the internal flow mechanisms of two–phase flow using a range of high-speed video and electrical capacitance tomographic techniques. However, some recent advances in instrumentation techniques have opened up new opportunities to gain a much better understanding of the forces experienced by individual particles and the impact of these forces on the motion of particles.
    
Back in 1984, I first met professor George Klinzing from the University of Pittsburgh at a conference in Canterbury in the UK. As many of you will know, George is a highly respected researcher in this field and a research colleague that I have interacted with over many years at pneumatic conveying conferences around the world. While George has had a distinguished career at Pittsburgh and held very senior executive management responsibilities, he has nevertheless remained strongly engaged in pneumatic conveying research. He and a distinguished colleague have developed a micro-probe measurement device that is almost the size of a particle which has the ability to measure forces and accelerations imparted to the particle. The University of Pittsburgh and the University of Newcastle, Australia have just been successful is winning major research funding to bring the expertise of these two groups together to gain a better understanding of gas-solid flow, with the aim of using the outputs of this research to improve our design and troubleshooting capabilities for practical industrial systems.
    
This is a wonderful example of international collaboration between two very strong research groups for the benefit of industry through the practical implementation of research outcomes. The project will run for three years and will involve researcher exchanges between the two universities.
    
Back in 1983, I could not have imagined how my final year research project would have such an influence on my career or how contacts and friendships initiated so long ago would be shaping the future of pneumatic conveying research today.
    
M. G. Jones, PhD, is the head, School of Engineering, University of Newcastle; director, TUNRA Bulk Solids Handling Research Associates (TBS); director, Centre for Bulk Solids and Particulate Technologies (CBSPT), University of Newcastle.

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