Facts At Your Fingertips: Design Considerations for Pneumatic Conveying

Attention to the design of bulk-solids pneumatic-conveying pipelines can help avoid conveying-system problems, such as low conveying rates, plugging, excessive wear-and-tear in the conveying line, high conveying-system pressure drop, product breakage, fines generation and product cross-contamination. This one-page reference provides general guidelines to help mitigate or avoid such problems in pneumatic conveying operations. Materials of construction. Pipes should be made from carbon steel if contamination is not an issue. Use stainless steel for food and pharmaceutical applications. For special applications with abrasive solids, high temperatures, and so on, it is necessary to find a suitable material for the conveying line and its components. Pressure rating.The pressure rating of the conveying pipeline should be suitable for the maximum conveying pressure of the conveying system. For most applications that have a Roots-type blower, a pressure rating of 30 psig is satisfactory. This rating corresponds to the rating of a Schedule 10 pipe. Use thicker pipes for higher-pressure applications. Temperature rating. The temperature rating of the conveying pipeline should be suitable for the minimum and maximum temperatures experienced…