Wear in a feed chute from classifier coarse stream

The coarse stream from a classifier screw entered the chute as a high-energy jet, and a large amount of water had to be added to keep it from plugging.

We modeled what actually happens in the chute and located the wear. Different designs were evaluated using CFD, coupled with DEM to understand the material stream in detail.

We helped develop a design where the classifier stream lands on the main bulk material stream instead of hitting the chute wall. The main stream has much greater momentum and larger particles. The design should also reduce the water that has to be added.