Working Parties and Sections are at the center of the scientific life of the European Federation of Chemical Engineers. Their role is to allow academic and industrial experts on scientific to meet and keep in contact in order to foster the development of knowledge in the field. They are made of delegates from the federated societies but also from elected members and guests. The specific objective of the WP Mechanics of Particulate Solids is the coordination and the exchange of scientific information regarding the mechanics and the dynamics of granular systems, mainly considered as bulk solids. Typical applications taken in to account are the equipment for storage, handling and physical transformation of solid materials in granular form. Among its activities, the WP critically follows the evolution of characterization standards and can be a promoter of new ones. The WP follows the dissemination of scientific information in this field and creates opportunities for comparison. Presently the WP includes 36 among delegates, elected members, international guests and honorary members from 16 European countries, from the United States and from Australia. The WP also invites other scholars working in the field of its scientific interest to participate to its meetings. The themes presently dealt with by the working party concern: 1) Wall friction project. This project is intended to find a more detailed procedure than the standard to obtain reproducible results with the measurements of the wall friction between bulk granular solids and silo walls. It was decided to carry out a ‘round robin’ test, following the model of the work carried out in the late 90’s by Haaker. In a thematic workshop in conjunction with the WP meeting in 2009 a modified measurement procedure was defined. WP participants from about 18 laboratories around the world take part to the work by carrying out experiments with their own equipment and with the material distributed by some industrial WP members. 2) Validation of DEM Simulation: A significant number of WP members take part to PARDEM project (www.pardem.eu), funded with ~3.3 million EUR by the EU 7th Research Framework Programme, Marie Curie Initial Training Network, for the period 2009-2013. The project is led by a Member of the WP, Prof. Jin Ooi, University of Edinburgh, UK. Thirteen PhD students and two Post Doc fellows are being trained. 3) K/lambda Testing: an experimental campaign is being carried out with the tester developed at the University of Salerno. The final objective of the experimental campaign is to find out a reproducible procedure which might be able to provide representative measures of the ratio of vertical to horizontal stresses. Experiments are carried out on both incompressible and compressible powders. 4) Flow properties of biomasses: Solid biomasses are renewable energy sources and can be made of different materials such as switch grass, corn stover, peanut hulls, bagasse. In energy production applications, these are often found as mixtures with traditional fossil fuel sources. These materials are typically fibrous, highly deformable.Their mechanical behavior is strongly affected by moisture and furthermore is not easily studied with conventional approach and instrumentation for bulk materials. Therefore, conventional silo and hopper design procedures are often inadequate. As a result, design errors are responsible of delayed start-ups and of reduced plant production capacities. A network has established within the working party trying to understand more deeply the flow behavior of these materials. In this keynote an overview of the Working party Mechanics of Particulate solids activity will be given and some details will be provided of the research activities carried out by the University of Salerno for the Working Party and in particular on the K/lambda Testing and in the field of the biomass flow properties.

The activities of the EFCE Working Party Mechanics of Particulate Solids and some contributions from the University of Salerno

POLETTO, Massimo;BARLETTA, Diego
2012-01-01

Abstract

Working Parties and Sections are at the center of the scientific life of the European Federation of Chemical Engineers. Their role is to allow academic and industrial experts on scientific to meet and keep in contact in order to foster the development of knowledge in the field. They are made of delegates from the federated societies but also from elected members and guests. The specific objective of the WP Mechanics of Particulate Solids is the coordination and the exchange of scientific information regarding the mechanics and the dynamics of granular systems, mainly considered as bulk solids. Typical applications taken in to account are the equipment for storage, handling and physical transformation of solid materials in granular form. Among its activities, the WP critically follows the evolution of characterization standards and can be a promoter of new ones. The WP follows the dissemination of scientific information in this field and creates opportunities for comparison. Presently the WP includes 36 among delegates, elected members, international guests and honorary members from 16 European countries, from the United States and from Australia. The WP also invites other scholars working in the field of its scientific interest to participate to its meetings. The themes presently dealt with by the working party concern: 1) Wall friction project. This project is intended to find a more detailed procedure than the standard to obtain reproducible results with the measurements of the wall friction between bulk granular solids and silo walls. It was decided to carry out a ‘round robin’ test, following the model of the work carried out in the late 90’s by Haaker. In a thematic workshop in conjunction with the WP meeting in 2009 a modified measurement procedure was defined. WP participants from about 18 laboratories around the world take part to the work by carrying out experiments with their own equipment and with the material distributed by some industrial WP members. 2) Validation of DEM Simulation: A significant number of WP members take part to PARDEM project (www.pardem.eu), funded with ~3.3 million EUR by the EU 7th Research Framework Programme, Marie Curie Initial Training Network, for the period 2009-2013. The project is led by a Member of the WP, Prof. Jin Ooi, University of Edinburgh, UK. Thirteen PhD students and two Post Doc fellows are being trained. 3) K/lambda Testing: an experimental campaign is being carried out with the tester developed at the University of Salerno. The final objective of the experimental campaign is to find out a reproducible procedure which might be able to provide representative measures of the ratio of vertical to horizontal stresses. Experiments are carried out on both incompressible and compressible powders. 4) Flow properties of biomasses: Solid biomasses are renewable energy sources and can be made of different materials such as switch grass, corn stover, peanut hulls, bagasse. In energy production applications, these are often found as mixtures with traditional fossil fuel sources. These materials are typically fibrous, highly deformable.Their mechanical behavior is strongly affected by moisture and furthermore is not easily studied with conventional approach and instrumentation for bulk materials. Therefore, conventional silo and hopper design procedures are often inadequate. As a result, design errors are responsible of delayed start-ups and of reduced plant production capacities. A network has established within the working party trying to understand more deeply the flow behavior of these materials. In this keynote an overview of the Working party Mechanics of Particulate solids activity will be given and some details will be provided of the research activities carried out by the University of Salerno for the Working Party and in particular on the K/lambda Testing and in the field of the biomass flow properties.
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Utilizza questo identificativo per citare o creare un link a questo documento: https://hdl.handle.net/11386/3436478
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