Air directly hitting vibration pads (aerators) to dislodge material

I am accustomed to areators at the bottom of the pots with the old Butlers, Heils and others at 40 foot length. Am accustomed to 14 pounds in the tank. Not the 30 you operate at.

Here is a thought, unload a soda ash load at 15 for laughs once. Then eliminate pressure after you think it's empty and check inside for your two or three tons still in it. Maybe it will be gone. Maybe not. If it's gone then that 30 pounds is possibly too much for the product.

Just a thought.

You are going to need a pipe fitter that understands very high pressure pumbling such as might be found in steam locomotives approaching 340 pounds of superheat PSI to do this work, I would not just give that custom job to anyone. Lives depend on this. Especially that you are operating these tankers at 30 PSI. In my day trailers we had are engineered to put up with 25 PSI before it finds a bad weld and fail. We never take them beyond 15.

 

Can you post a picture of your bulker that you’re talking about?? I dont know of any manufacturer thats building trailers to handle 30psi. Industry standards are 15-20psi plus I dont know of any blower systems that will make 30psi. Hopefully your trailers are built with aeration pods on the bottom of the hoppers otherwise unloading all the product will be a pain and slow. The aerators also act as vibrators and aid in dislodging stuck product. If the product is still sticking to the inside of the trailer you can use a PLASTIC or RUBBER dead blow style hammer with LIGHT SWINGS to help vibrate the sides so the product falls out. NEVER EVER use a metal hammer on a pressure vessel especially an aluminum trailer.

 

This is what I stand on as well.

The more I think about this, 30 PSI you have essentially a bomb. A big one. Consider at 4 PSI overpressure blast your eardrums go out. Approaching 15 PSI wave your lungs are pulp then fills with blood drowning you in a short time. Anything over 20 PSI is not considered survivable by the human.

 

You are using the wrong trailer for the job.

I seriously doubt extra 10 mm holes will do anything but weaken the trailer. Frankly I'm surprised your only leaving 3-4 tons on the ends.

Buy a 3 or 4 hole pneumatic cement trailer with the plastic linings and be done with it.

 

Used to do two types of TIO2 [titanium dioxide] pigment with a dedicated Heil 1600 cu. ft. bulker.

One grade was very moisture sensitive and the trailer had been modified by adding (3) small vibrators about a foot above each flo-cone.
Each hopper had it's own air feed and the paint plant supplied 120# compressed air to run them while we were blowing off the product.
They were a lot smaller than the vibes used on rail cars, the trio on each hopper sounded like a bunch of angry bees and after many years we did have a few cracks into the rear void section

 

You should be fine in using a tanker built for cement to unload soda ash. Ive hauled sand, pebble lime, powdered lime, and granulated fertilizer all in the same trailer. Each unloads a little differently though. As for the silo height thats fairly normal and Ive pushed into silo’s twice that tall. To reduce pressure in the trailer you need to control the amount of air you’re putting in. To do this you need to close off some of the aerators and open the mixing valve that controls the air between the line going to the aerators and the main line that runs under the trailer. Also just a thought are your gauges reading in PSI or KPA? If reading in KPA that 30 reading is very low and could be the reason you’re also leaving product in the trailer. Again if you could get us a picture of the trailer and the piping and valve setup we can give more specific help. Ive put a couple thousand tons through setup’s like this.

 

60 feet up into the air is normal. We have fed 200 foot silos before. On Plant air mind you, not exhaust blowers.

If you are at say 14 pounds tank air, unloading product and your hose quits moving and your tank air starts climbing past 15, you are plugged up at the silo pipe. Remedy the situation very quickly at the pot before you really plug up or fall back through and wreck the check valve.

30 is too #### high.

 

What you are calling a bypass is known as 'Line Air' VRS 'top air +/or aerators'

You build tank pressure to 10 - 12PSIG and open the Line Air to blow any leakage thru the pipe to the silo and leave it open...Ideally the tank pressure and line pressure should be close to each other and you can balance this by tweeking the valves

THEN you open the front hopper outlet, slowly to let the product fall into the outlet line.

ANYTIME the line pressure shoots up, you are starting to plug, close the outlet and watch for the line pressure to drop which tells you it is moving again...

Better to only crack the hopper product valve and take longer than to keep trying to push too much and plug.

30PSIG will eventually pop a hose or silo pipeline coupler as the product is not moving...

Slow down and keep the line air open...the principles are the same for all dry flowables.

Remember you need air flow to carry the product. Same when Vacuuming. We would often get our 'thief' back from others with the vent holes covered with tape and they always gripped about how long it took to suck the product into the trailer.

We always ;laughed 'cause the vent holes kept the Vac trailer pulling in air bringing the product along but the tape made the hose draw air thru the product and made the job take a lot longer....