MACHINERY | MATERIALS HANDLING
Right: Inside Coperion’s materials handling test facility at Weingarten in Germany
wear. One way to improve accuracy is to add a flow meter between the pump and the process, taking information from the flow meter to adjust the speed of the pump, according to the Bronkhorst engineering team. Traditionally, this would be managed with an analogue output signal from the flow meter fed into a separate PID controller that compares the real flow signal to the desired flow. The controller can then adjust the speed of the pump to achieve the desired dose or flow. While this solution will mitigate the original issues, it introduces new ones, says Walton. For example, there may be a slow flow signal due to signal filtering in the PID controller; or a slow pump response due to extra control relay. Extra components also increase complexity, and the time to achieve stable flow can be long. There is also the question of the extra cost to be considered in any project. An alternative option is to carry out direct mass
flow measurement with a flow meter with built-in PID control that can drive a pump to achieve the desired dose or flow. “With this solution you do not need to include the pump in the control system, just give a set point demand to the mass flow meter and it will drive the pump to achieve the desired dose or flow,” Walton notes.
Testing times Several developers and producers of bulk handling systems have test facilities that are open to custom- ers as well as being used for internal R&D purpos- es. Coperion claims to have some of the most advanced materials handling trialling capabilities across its facilities at Weingarten in Germany and at
the Bulk Solids Innovation Center at Salina in the US. The company can run material heating, cooling, blending and mixing trials, as well as bulk convey- ing (it claims to have a total of 2,000m of conveying lines across its test locations able to handle capacities up to 300 tonnes/hr). Last year, the company also took its materials handling capabilities on the road in the US in the form of its Traveling Equipment Display. The truck-based showroom allowed the company to
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PHOTO: COPERION
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