(181e) Silos - beyond Storage

The original purpose of silos is to store bulk solids. Design methods as the Jenike design procedure to ensure functionality by mass flow and the Janssen method to calculate pressures in silos are well established. In recent years the advantage of the mass flow has been learnt about by other applications and respective concepts are being developed or adopted.

In this paper the advantages of mass flow for design of gravity flow blenders and for degassing vessels is described. Different gravity blender designs and their respective operations to improve their performance are explained and demonstrate in examples. New design approaches of degassing vessels under consideration of energy savings are shown. Results of experiments on the residence time distribution in silos close to the mass flow boundary and on the gas distribution in purge vessels are presented.