Hopper Cleaning Applications
The major problem in hoppers is bridging, this is caused when the design of the hopper section has insufficient angle of repose, side walls with excessive frictional properties or an insufficiently sized outlet for the material being contained. Consequently these problems can become severe if a silo is used for materials different to that it was designed for either through process or plant layout changes over time.
To combat bridging an Acoustic Cleaner is mounted just above the outlet, when this sounds single particles and clusters of particles move at different speeds therefore bridges are collapsed and material flow is restored.
Once the Acoustic Cleaner has ceased to sound new bridges and arches will begin to form, to counter this the sounding may be controlled in one of two ways either simply on a timer device typically set for a few seconds every 10 minutes or alternatively it can be controlled automatically via a flow sensor downstream of the outlet or even from load cells.
