Á. Ramírez-Gómez, C. González-Montellano, E.Gallego, F.Ayuga, J.M. Fuentes
CIGR - AgEng2012
International Conference of Agricultural Engineering
Silos and hoppers are structures designed for storing and handling very different granular materials in the industry. The discharge rate produced during the discharge processes must be perfectly known in many cases. There exist some classical analytical procedures for estimating the discharge rate and their validity has been checked for many granular materials usually handled in the industry. However, this is not the case of new materials, such us biomass pellets and briquettes. In this work, different discrete element models have been used to predict the discharge rate of biomass pellets from a hopper under different conditions. The preliminary results of these models were compared with those obtained using analytical procedures and a good level of agreement has been found.Access conference proceedings
biomass pellets, Discharge rate, Discrete element method, Hopper