Increasing Particle Sizing Efficiency

    With energy costs rising, the value of most powders and bulk solids has been rising steadily as well, giving manufacturers ample reason to improve production efficiency. "Companies not only want to reduce their consumption of power, they also want to reduce product losses," says Scott Will, director of sales and marketing for Modern Process Equipment (Chicago, Ill.); "if you bring in a product, and you throw 20% away, you are losing efficiency." Bill Brown, manager of the Chemicals and Minerals Division, Hosokawa Micron Powder Systems (Summit, N.J.) agrees, noting that, "Ten years ago, there was a lot of expansion, but projects in the past five years mostly involve taking existing processes and trying to make them more efficient. For example, a customer will call and say, ‘I want to increase capacity by 3%,’ so we are looking at more efficient ways to reduce size, looking to get more output with the same input." Attaining higher efficiency in particle sizing can be effected through improvements at all stages of the process. Mill designs are being optimized for individual specialized applications. Improved maintainability in screeners leads to increased uptime, and new methods…