When designing a plant, it is important to consider the flow of material during a given time.\u00a0 This is the \u201cmass flow rate\u201d and is important when specifying equipment capacities for conveying and bins.\u00a0 Under sizing equipment will cause bottlenecks in production while over sizing equipment could result in overpaying for equipment much larger than required.\u00a0 The following can be used to calculate capacities for conveyors and bucket elevators.<\/p>\n
Things You Need<\/span> Density There are many resources online to help estimate bulk density. \u00a0A simple search will yield several results.\u00a0 Some specialty items, such as those your plant produces, may need to be determined by a simple test.<\/p>\n Calculating Density<\/span> Putting It All Together<\/span> Our manufacturer says we can transport 180 cubic feet \/ hour.\u00a0 Our soybeans are whole and have a density of approximately 47 pounds\/cubic foot.\u00a0 Simply multiply the density by the capacity gives us 8460 pounds\/hour (180*47).\u00a0 This is a little over 4 tons per hour, which is more than enough for our 1 ton per hour requirement.<\/p>\n Other Items When designing a plant, it is important to consider the flow of material during a given time.\u00a0 This is the \u201cmass flow rate\u201d and is important when specifying equipment capacities for conveying and bins.\u00a0 Under sizing equipment will cause bottlenecks in production while over sizing equipment could result in overpaying for equipment much larger than […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":68,"featured_media":11010,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[7176],"tags":[1841,32,93],"class_list":["post-1564","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-engineeringandmaintenance","tag-conveyor","tag-customer-support","tag-processing-feed-or-food"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\n
\nMost manufacturers will publish some specifications about their conveyors which will help with calculations.\u00a0 One such rate is cubic feet or cubic meters per hour.\u00a0 This term states how much volume can be conveyed per hour and is the most important when trying to calculate your conveying needs.\u00a0 This will help size the proper conveyor, but we need one more piece of information first.<\/p>\n
\n<\/span>The above calculations will help determine how much volume of product moves per hour.\u00a0 Now we have to consider the product that we will be transporting.<\/p>\n
\nYou can calculate density of a product very simply.\u00a0 You must construct or purchase a box of known dimensions, fill and weigh the box and then divide the results by the volume of the box.\u00a0 As an example, you could construct a box 30.48 cm long x 30.48 cm wide x 30.48 cm high (28,317 cubit cm, approximately 1 cubic foot).\u00a0 Next, zero or tare the scale with the box on it so the whole unit reads zero.\u00a0 Then, fill the box completely level to the top (not under it and not overflowing) and gather the results.\u00a0 Calculate the volume of the box (length x width x height) and take your product weight divided by this answer.\u00a0 The result will be density, which may need to be converted to more reasonable units such as pounds\/cubic feet or kg\/cubic meter.<\/p>\n
\nNow that we have capacity and density, we can calculate a rate per hour.\u00a0 As an example, let\u2019s assume we need to transport 1 ton of soybeans per hour with a screw conveyor.\u00a0 Is this achievable with a 6 inch conveyor?<\/p>\n
\n<\/span>You could also use this methodology to calculate bin sizes as well.\u00a0 Simply determine your bin size (volume) and they multiply by the product density.\u00a0 Then, if you have an approximate capacity, you could divide to see how much time it will take to empty the bin.\u00a0 For intermediate process bins, you may want up 30 minute holding capacity while larger day bin and storage bins may require 2-4 hours.\u00a0 Hopefully these ideas will help correctly size your conveying and storage needs and give you more insight on how to correctly calculate what your plant needs.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"