Abstract
In the agricultural industry, the conservation of wheat grains in silos after stocking is a hard task. This is because when stocking a large crop, hot aeration from the bottom of the silo is not sufficient to preserve the crop and avoid losses due to the manifestation of moisture between grains and grains-wall. As a concern, engineers, as well as inspectors, challenged day-to-day issues whenever packing such granular material. A screw could be a good solution to improve the dryness of the particles and mix the bed material in case of stocking different types of grains. Mainly, the complexity does emanate from the model used to predict accurately the mixing performance. Emerging generation of simulation codes using the discrete element method (e.g., EDEM®, LIGGGHTS, etc.) have brought an intact solution to the problem of particulate flow and particles inhomogeneity. The present work has sought to develop predictive models for average mixing index and particles velocity distribution assessments in mixing of wheat granules in a small-scaled hopper base screw mixer. A screw-mated-horizontal-ploughs has been utilized to improve the agitation of grains rather than a simple screw. 1, 2 and 4 mated ploughs to the screw axle has been used, also the tilt angle of the 4 mated ploughs case has been varied as follows; 20°, 45° and 70° then evaluated. Next, findings regarding bed homogeneity are calculated using the Lacey method [1] for quantitative analysis and visual observations have been read out for qualitative assessment. Particles inhomogeneity is at its minimum when more ploughs mated to the screw were used.
Highlights
Mixing of granular materials is an inevitable process to manufacture various types of products such as pharmaceutical [2], chemical [3], and metallurgical [4]
There were no significant differences between the different screw-mated-ploughs tilt angle configurations, the most marked observation to emerge from visual observation was the state between mixed particles with a normal screw and the number of mated ploughs to the screw axle
The curves reveal that mixing in the hopper bottom mixer with a screw-mated-ploughs is much better than that without mated ploughs, yet mixer using 4 ploughs mated to the screw axle showed relatively high efficiency to mix the particles, the ploughs tilt angles had no important impact on the mixture
Summary
Mixing of granular materials is an inevitable process to manufacture various types of products such as pharmaceutical [2], chemical [3], and metallurgical [4]. The costly experimental work is no more required to find the optimal mixing time and investigate the mixing performance after the emergence of the discrete element method This method is applied by conducting numerical-based simulations to imitate a real process and obtain detailed pieces of information such as particles velocity and contact forces that cannot be obtained experimentally [8,[9]. Chandratilleke et al, [13] used the discrete element method to study the impact of the gap between the impeller and the bottom of the mixer on the mixing performance They revealed that the forces acting on particles, their velocity field and mixing are interconnected. The mechanisms of mixing enhancement of binary mixtures in the hopper base mixer by screw-mated-horizontal-ploughs were discussed
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