Six Tips to Prevent Those Annoying Streamers

ByArlen Simpelo

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Flaws brought about at the incredibly stop of the production chain are often the most difficult to swallow. You’ve included your raw products at just the proper ratio, your extruder’s certain electrical power is just appropriate, and then when you go load a railcar or box, your goods are entire of streamers (aka snakeskins).

In a best world, you’d observe the dilemma two weeks in advance of the buy is thanks and react by assembling a crew of your brightest coworkers to do a totally in depth root bring about examination and immediately and competently put into action a capital challenge to resolve the problem.

In the authentic world, you’ll get a contact from your manager five minutes right before you’re likely to go away for the working day with a “request” to occur up with a remedy ASAP.  For the reason that if you don’t, you’re heading to drop your company’s most important shopper as this get is by now two times at the rear of agenda. You know there are many root causes, but you will need a resolution … and you have to have it now.

Solving Streamers in Plastics Processing

Streamers can be caused by a variety of items, generally relevant to pellet or air temperature or air volume. And in the real planet they ordinarily are encountered at the worst feasible time. (Picture: Pneuvay Engineering)

There have currently been a quantity of posts on the root causes of streamers revealed in Plastic Technological innovation and elsewhere. Below are a couple of of the most common leads to:

 •  Pellets are far too very hot

 •  Air is also hot

 •  There is too significantly air

 •  Anything is amiss with conveying-line piping and elbows.

Let’s discover some of the solutions—in order from least pricey to costliest when you have a finances of $ and never have any time to take care of an situation, often you have to get started with the most price tag-successful knee-jerk resolution and do the job your way down.
 

Remedy 1: Modify Solids-to-Air Ratio with Bleed-Off Valve

Bleeding off surplus air which is not important to convey your pellets is by much the least complicated remedy if you obtain by yourself building streamers through transfer from one bin at ambient temperature to one more.

If you have a bleed-off valve or VFD on your blower motor by now put in, it’s a zero-expense choice to reduce the quantity of air utilised to express pellets. If you have a threaded relationship somewhere in the conveying pipe, you can institute this answer with around $200 well worth of threaded fittings.

Why would this work? Just about every stable particle has a certain volume of air velocity desired to maintain it suspended in air, termed the “saltation velocity.” Feel of it as the bare minimum velocity of air expected to express a substance. If the velocity is too small, then the pellets fall out of the conveying air and plug up your pipe.

If you use way too substantially air, the pellets will rub towards the pipe wall to produce streamers.

When a dilute-section blower is sized, the OEM commonly oversizes it just to make certain it has sufficient “oomph” to get pellets from point A to point B. Then the engineering organization will get the layout and oversizes it a little bit much more to make sure they never get in hassle. Then the job engineer oversizes it and the cycle continues. This commonly leaves you with a blower that is a lot much better than you have to have to convey pellets.

This can guide to streamers if your solids-to-air ratio is way too superior. If you use as well a great deal air, the pellets will rub towards the pipe wall to produce streamers. If you decreased the sum of air utilized to express pellets, the pipe will be crammed with a lot more pellets and as an alternative of rubbing towards the pipe, they’ll rub in opposition to other pellets, which are a lot softer and considerably less very likely to create streamers.

So, just after you’ve calculated your pellets’ saltation velocity and as opposed it with the air velocity you are having from your blower, you can enjoy all over with it and see regardless of whether this selection gets rid of or alleviates your trouble.
 

Answer 2: Cool the Pellets Much more

This is the most obvious solution if you see streamers tied to pellet temperature being also high. You can reference a prior past article on calculating how prolonged a water bathtub you should really use to great pellets, or take into account other tips on drinking water-bathtub temperature, together with:

 •  Reducing h2o-bathtub temperature

 •  “Double-backing” strands to raise water-bath duration

 •  Shifting die gap measurement, if it is an solution (more compact strands are less complicated to neat than thicker kinds)

 •  Deploying evaporative cooling (i.e., spray nozzles or spray bars on the drinking water bath).

If you’re in a pinch and you have a strand-pelletizing technique, double-backing the strands with a spare established of drinking water-bathtub rollers is a rapid, easy and inexpensive way to enhance pellet cooling. All that’s wanted is a drill and a spare established of strand rollers and you can virtually double the duration of your water bathtub with two holes in the aspect runners of the tub.

Solving Streamers in Plastics Processing
Double-backing the strands with a spare set of drinking water bath rollers is a swift, uncomplicated, and low-cost way to get maximize pellet-cooling time. (Resource: B. Spencer III)

 

Option 3: Streamer Screener

If all those to start with two options did not perform out for you as a brief-time period repair, then you have arrived at the phase in which you have to mitigate the consequences of the dilemma as a substitute of becoming able to remove it.

The most effective way to mitigate this issue is with a do-it-yourself streamer screener. The most affordable selection is to get a mesh screen or components fabric from a neighborhood hardware retail outlet and fasten it to the chute out of which the pellets arrive. If you have a tiny much more time, have a mechanical contractor make a streamer screener that can fasten on to the chute that pellets appear out of in get to catch streamers.

This is the least preferred strategy, as you have not eliminated the root lead to of streamers and your operators will abhor this as they will constantly have to start and quit pellet transfers to thoroughly clean the screen. But if you’re in a bind and this is all you can do as a temporary solution, then this is what you can do.

Of class, if you have time, below are some other ways to eliminate your streamer challenge that require some financial commitment.
 

Remedy 4: Air-to-Air Warmth Exchangers

Applying an air-to-air warmth exchanger is a different price-productive choice to support deal with also high a blower outlet temperature. Following looking at the expense of the heat exchanger, piping variations, and electrical, you could be in the neighborhood of $10,000 to $25,000, depending on your scenario.

Preserve in thoughts that most dilute-stage blowers will increase the air temperature by 100° F all the way up to 200° F in some instances. So, if your ambient air is currently at 100 F, then you now could be using 300 F air to express pellets. Every single kind of plastic has a softening position, and you want to keep on being about 20° F beneath that, so if you’re utilizing 300 F air to express pellets that need to be conveyed with at most 160 F air, then you are likely to get streamers.

Solving Streamers in Plastics Processing

An air-to-air heat exchanger is one more price tag-effective option to assistance deal with way too high a blower outlet temperature. (Image: Xchanger)

Putting in an air-to-air warmth exchanger is a good way to interesting the air just before it reaches the pellets. From experience, Xchanger brand warmth exchangers are very successful, not only from a efficiency standpoint but also from an operational charge viewpoint.
 

Alternative 5: Specialty Elbows and Shot Pinging

Certain types of elbows can trigger streamers if they are not the right shape. For case in point, some extended-radius elbows can bring about streamers to form as the pellets glide together the elbow. This option should really be seemed at in afterwards phases of analysis for the reason that if your pellets or air are far too hot or you’re using too substantially air, then modifying out elbows will not clear up your challenge.

There is a multitude of specialty elbows readily available in the market place. Every single functions the exact way, hoping to prevent pellets from hitting the elbow’s steel and in its place hit other pellets as they make their way to their destination.

These have been most thriving in mitigating abrasive dress in (e.g., from fiberglass-crammed pellets) as opposed to preventing streamers, but they do help. The trouble is that if you are trying to swap each elbow (and maybe each and every flange on each individual elbow relationship), this can get pricey immediately. Coupled with very long lead periods, this ought to be evaluated very carefully.

Tied to this is shot pinging, which makes tiny divots in the piping so that as an alternative of the pellets rubbing up versus the facet of the pipe, the divots would induce the pellets to bounce off the sides of the pipes less complicated. This is not a affordable option or one particular with a quickly direct time.
 

Remedy 6: Transform the Transfer Method

This is the nuclear possibility. If you have completed all you can to tweak the method and piping, the only way to go is to adjust to a dense-section or conveyor program.

Possessing a massive bucket elevator will be the more affordable way to go, but it will nonetheless be a funds job with electrical and mechanical work associated. If you’re fearful about cross-contamination, which would guide you to more than two bucket elevators, you must critically look at a dense-stage conveying method.
 

ABOUT THE Creator: Bruce Spencer III is a expert engineer with many many years of encounter resolving engineering and generation-relevant issues linked to extrusion. He is the owner of Valiant Phoenix Engineering. He has held several positions in the plastics marketplace in excess of his job, which includes EHS, approach engineering and creation roles. Get hold of:  [email protected]