Design of hoppers using spreadsheet

Abstract

Oko C.O.C., Diemuodeke E.O., Akilande I.S., 2010. Design of hoppers using spreadsheet. Res. Agr. Eng., 56: 53-58. This paper presents a spreadsheet add-in for the design of mass flow conical and wedge hoppers. The Jenike's hopper design charts for mass flow were curve fitted. The relationships obtained were used together with other relevant expressions to develop an add-in tool for the determination of the pertinent hopper design parameters (exit size, mass flow rate, semi-included angle, flow factor, and critical applied stress) in the Microsoft Excel environment. The add-in was tested with experimental data, and results obtained were in agreement with those obtained in the literature.

Conical Hopper Design Parameters for Selected Food Powders using MS Excel Add-in

“…The design procedure for mass flow hoppers presented in Oko et al [1] Once the effective angle of internal friction and MFF are determined for the powder, the wall friction angle is the only determining factor for the critical applied stress. This present work modified and executed the hopper design algorithm presented by Oko et al [1], to make the MS Excel spreadsheet based mass flow hopper design procedure to be more flexible, and is presented as follows: start input data (i) experimentally determined wall friction angle and effective angle of internal friction;…”

“…This present work modified and executed the hopper design algorithm presented by Oko et al [1], to make the MS Excel spreadsheet based mass flow hopper design procedure to be more flexible, and is presented as follows: start input data (i) experimentally determined wall friction angle and effective angle of internal friction;…”

“…The complexity surrounding hopper design is mostly due to the mass flow ability, which depends principally on the mechanical behaviour of the stored material, semi-included angle, flow factor and the critical applied stress [1], [2]. Designing and troubleshooting mass flow hoppers require the measurement of powder flow [3], [4].…”

“…The development of the hopper design spreadsheet add-in for conical and wedge types of hopper by Oko et al [1] guides the engineers through the established methodologies to use measured powder flow data to generate design parameters, for powder or particulate flow hoppers. This development brings hopper design within the reach of the majority of process engineers, offering an opportunity to reduce costs and gain a better understanding of the factors influencing their performance.…”

“…Therefore, this paper applied the Oko et al [1] MS Excel Addin for hopper design to establish conical hopper design parameters for a range of wall friction angles (12 -29 [ o ]) for ten food powders: coarse flour, semolina, wheat groats, pearl barley groats, oat meal, icing sugar, table sugar, potato flour, powdered milk and table salt based on the physical properties and direct shear test data presented in [8] by using a modification of the spreadsheet add-in developed by Oko et al [1].…”