Principles Archives

Successful Plastics Recycling

How can plastics processing operations increase the proportion of recycled material used in compounds while maximizing quality?

Circular economy is the big trending topic right now in the plastics industry. Recycling within the industry, in contrast, is long established, so why all the hype around circular economy all of a sudden?

Bulk Material Mixer MIX-A-LOT Successfully Introduced to the Market

The efficiency of the mechanical bulk material mixer MIX-A-LOT is reliably proven every day in numerous compounding plants worldwide! Since the market launch two years ago, the MIX-A-LOT is being used by many renowned multi-national compound producers for efficient, fast and gentle homogenization of the fed material.

Visionary Multi-Layer Film Recycling Avoids Production Waste

Coperion is implementing a closed-loop concept for the production of flexible multi-layer film. Recycling multi-layer film has long posed a challenge since such films can only be reclaimed in very complicated ways and not without residues. Now, however, Coperion has developed a closed-loop approach solution in which up to 100 percent of multi-layer film production waste can be re-processed and fed back into the production process in a closed-loop.

The 5 Reason Why Our MCHybrid is not just another Batch Blended

The MCHybrid is not just another batch blender, but a unique revolutionary concept. Let’s explain all the benefits of this concept to you in this blog. But first watch the 3D animation below to understand how this gravimetric batch blender with inline dosing systems works!

Managing Dust Emissions During Loadout

Loading dry bulk solids can be a quick and effective solution for transporting product, but while the process provides many benefits, there are considerations that must be taken into account.

Dusts released into the atmosphere during loadout can have a plethora of negative effects on nearby populations and ecosystems. Dust can pollute waterways, contaminate nearby homes, businesses and vehicles, and if inhaled, can create health risks.

What is a Multi-Port Diverter?

A Multi-Port Diverter is an integrated and automated solution for diverting and/or converging dry solid materials. Depending on the application, a multi-port diverter can be designed to transport materials from a single source or several sources toward any number of destinations.

Wye Line Diverter vs. Flex Tube Diverter: What’s The Difference?

The Wye Line Diverter and the Flex Tube Diverter are among Vortex’s most popular diverter valves for pneumatic conveying applications.

There are two primary factors when considering the Wye Line Diverter and the Flex Tube Diverter. Those being :

Concerns for material cross-contamination
Available space/stack-up height

Standing Column vs. Flowing Column: What’s the Difference?

In process engineering, for every solution to a consideration, three more considerations often arise. Material conveyance and valve selection are no exception. This white paper will address the difference between a standing column of material versus a flowing column of material, as well as considerations to be made when selecting a process gate to address each.

A “standing column” describes material accumulation above and below the gate while a “flowing column” describes materials freely passing through the gate.

The primary difference is that a “standing column” describes static materials at rest, while a “flowing column” describes suspended materials in motion.

What is an Air-Gravity Conveyor?

An air-gravity conveyor is a device for moving a variety of light-weight, fluidizable dry bulk powders. The conveyor consists of a rectangular chamber separated by an air-permeable, porous media. The media is placed along a horizontal plane to separate two chambers within the conveyor: An upper chamber to handle the material being conveyed, and a lower chamber to handle compressed air.

Techniques for Dust Management during Loadout

In dry bulk solid material handling operations, workers can be exposed to a plethora of hazards if proper precautionary measures are not taken to create a safe, dust-free environment. Learn on Health & Safety, Environmental issues, Vortex Loading Solutions etc.

Things to Consider When Diverting or Converging in Dilute Phase

Dilute phase conveying is described as low pressure, high velocity material movement. Oppositely, dense phase conveying is characterized as high pressure, low velocity material movement.

If material characteristics and application parameters permit, dilute phase conveying is often preferred because it can be more energy efficient and can improve process efficiencies by conveying materials at higher rates of speed. However, many considerations must be made when designing a dilute phase pneumatic conveying process.

This article will address just a few of the many considerations that must be made before selecting valves to divert or converge dry materials in dilute phase.

Vortex Pivoting Chute Diverter Lets You Shift on the Fly

When the need arises to divert dry bulk material during gravity flow situations, one normally considers a typical flapper style diverter for the application. In applications where the sealing of non-abrasive, fine material is involved, the flapper is a perfect choice. There are applications and material handling situations, however, where a different style diverter might offer distinct advantages over a flapper. The Vortex Pivoting Chute Diverter embodies those advantages.

Orifice Gate vs. Roller Gate: What's the Difference?

Since their conception decades ago, the Vortex Orifice Gate and the Vortex Roller Gate have been two of Vortexs most popular solutions for handling dry bulk solid materials. By their simplest definitions, both the Orifice Gate and the Roller Gate are slide gates. However, the application benefits for each gate can be quite different.

Safeguard Technologies for Dry Bulk Material Handling

When designing a system for dry bulk material handling, it is important to consider all possible scenarios a slide gate may face during its life cycle and equip it to appropriately handle those obstacles as they arise. For this reason and as a safety precaution, it is beneficial for a slide gate to be equipped with both a fail-safe air tank and a vented ball valve.

Using Trending Capabilities to Troubleshoot Continuous Feeder Performance Problems

Tablets & Capsules

Learn how to use a loss-in-weight feeder’s trending capabilities to help determine the cause of feeder performance problems.

Controlling upstream and downstream influences on loss-in-weight feeders

Powder Bulk Engineering

Loss-in-weight (LIW) feeder performance is affected by a number of influences, both internal and external to the feeder and feeder process. Understanding the significance of these influences is critical for achieving optimal performance. This article will describe some strategies to help ensure accurate weighinhg with your LIW feeder.

Conquering the Main Wear Factors in Diverter Valves

Powder & Bulk Solids

A diverter valve is used to divert material from one source to different destinations in a pneumatic conveying system or a gravity pipe. Pellets, granules or fine powders passing through the diverter valve cause wear along the valve’s passage, especially with abrasive products as used in the mineral and cement industries. Examples are raw meal, lime, fly ash, bypass dust, clinker, cement, petcoke and lignite to name a few. Diverter valves that have been designed with main wear factors in mind make it possible to convey even highly abrasive powder bulk materials economically and reliably. They also enjoy a long service life and are easy to maintain.

Nut Butter Manufacturer Modernizes Plant Operations

Food Engineering

The complete material handling system provided by Coperion K-Tron includes several pneumatic transfer lines for various stages of the peanut butter process. First, raw peanuts are vacuum conveyed direct to a peanut roaster. After the peanuts are roasted, a second line transfers them under vacuum to the blancher. Once the peanuts are blanched, they are then vacuum conveyed to yet another line. There, they are metered via a Coperion K-Tron weigh belt feeder to a screw conveyor, and both sugar and salt are added to the nuts via Coperion K-Tron loss-in-weight feeders

Defining Feeder Accuracy For Continuous Processing

Processing Magazine

Continuous processing is a manufacturing practice that has been used in the plastics, chemical and food industries for decades. Although primarily used for liquid processing, the innovations made in dry powder feeder technologies have enabled the use of continuous dry ingredient feeding for a variety of applications.

Optimize Feeding to Make More Money in Twin-Screw Compounding

Plastics Technology

Every business want to increase profits. Companies can deploy many strategies to do so that can fall across various areas of the business, such as reducing inventory, negotiating lower prices from suppliers, or increasing marketing efforts, to name a few. When it comes to operations, the capital equipment is often already in place and is therefore a sunk cost. Increasing profitatbility in this case is usually depends on maximizing productivity of these assets. For twin-screw extrusion processes, this is most easily achieved by increasing throughput rate, thereby spreading operation costs over a greater amount of product produced in the same unit of time.