Home // INFOCOMP 2018, The Eighth International Conference on Advanced Communications and Computation // View article

Mixing Power Consumption for Hulled Millet in an Agitated Drum Dryer with Discrete Element Method

Authors:
Tibor Poós Dr.
Dániel Horváth
Kornél Tamás Dr.

Keywords: hulled millet; agitated drum dryer; moisture content; mixing; discrete element method

Abstract:
There are several technologies in the agricultural, food, chemical and pharmaceutical industries for mixing granular materials. In these processes the homogenization of the particle fractions or the prevention of arch building process play very important roles. To select appropriate mixers’ motors installed in certain devices, it is necessary to specify the rotational speed of the mixer and the power requirement of the propulsion engine. This selection is a difficult task nowadays for mechanical engineers without measurement or an appropriate method for the estimation of power requirement. In researches available in the literature, the determination of the mixing power requirement is solely analytical and only for devices of universal design and geometry, in the case of mixing of certain substances. The main purpose of this research is to improve a simulation model for determining the power requirement of an agitated drum dryer, which can be generally used for modeling the mixing process of granular materials with various moisture content. In this study, laboratory measurements were made by mixing hulled millet and the results were approximated by the simulations based on discrete element method (DEM). In order to give an exact estimation of the power requirement of a given mixer, accurate geometry of the drum dryer and the appropriate micromechanical and physical parameters of the discrete particle assembly are required. In laboratory tests, the mixing power requirements of the agitated drum dryer were measured at various rotational speeds (0.48 ÷ 1.58 rev/s) using hulled millet with different moisture contents on wet basis (9.6 ÷ 29.5%) with different drum loading factors (5 ÷ 25%). Based on results it can be stated that the mixing power requirement is greatly influenced by the moisture content of the granular material and the rotational speed of the agitator. The preliminary DEM simulations and parameter sensitivity studies revealed which micromechanical parameters of the contact model should be changed in order to simulate the power requirements with good approximation.

Pages: 94 to 98

Copyright: Copyright (c) IARIA, 2018

Publication date: July 22, 2018

Published in: conference

ISSN: 2308-3484

ISBN: 978-1-61208-655-2

Location: Barcelona, Spain

Dates: from July 22, 2018 to July 26, 2018