Lump breakers are the unsung heroes of the pneumatic conveyance world. Without them, materials would often be too big to pass through a pneumatic conveyor and sell to customers efficiently, and some might even run the risk of damaging screening equipment. Let’s look at what a Lump Breaker is, why we use them, and three benefits to their use.
What is a Lump Breaker?
Lump breakers (sometimes referred to as powder crushers, lump crushers, or granulators) are mechanical devices that break down larger bulk solid materials into smaller pieces like granules or powders.
Why are Lump Breakers Used?
Materials often clump together due to moisture and particles settling during storage, transportation, or the manufacturing process. These clumps are undesirable, as they make transportation of the material difficult, and buyers expect the material they buy to be of a consistent size. Lump crushers address these issues and are designed to handle various materials for multiple industries, whether wet, dry, hard, or soft.
Benefits of Using a Lump Breaker
There are several benefits to using lump breakers when transporting bulk materials.
Product Clumping (Agglomeration)
Certain materials, such as coal, gypsum, detergents, herbicides, sugar, and salt (among others), tend to agglomerate during storage and transport. Materials may be exposed to moisture or high humidity levels, which may cause certain materials to clump. Super sacks, rail cars, silos, IBCs, and Day Bins can also cause materials to settle towards the bottom of their containers and clump together as the material settles. Buyers aren’t likely to purchase material in this state so many manufacturers will place lump breakers under their silos and bulk bag unloaders to break down the larger chunks before transport.
Material is Too Big
Sometimes the materials you purchase are larger than what you plan to transport. To meet market expectations for the materials and transport them more efficiently, you may need to break the material down into smaller pieces via a lump breaker. This can be vitally important if you’re using a pneumatic conveyor system, where having the correct air-to-particle ratio is critical to its efficiency.
Protect Your Screening Equipment
Fine materials such as salt are often fed through screening equipment such as a screen mesh and powder sieve. These aid in quality control by keeping foreign materials out by ensuring that only particles of the proper size continue to the conveyance process.
Unfortunately, salt, sugar, and some powdered chemicals can form brick-like clumps when exposed to moisture. These clumps, when fed into a screener, can damage not only the screen itself but also the powder sieve.
By placing a Lump Breaker before the screening process, you can reduce these hard lumps and lessen the chance of a large one damaging your screen mesh. The less often you replace a screen mesh, the less downtime you have.
As you can see, while we may think of a pneumatic conveyance system as stainless steel tubes and ceramic elbows, Lump Crushers play an important role in ensuring materials are small enough to travel through them efficiently.
At Progressive Products Inc., we supply a range of components for your pneumatic conveying system, including lump breakers. Contact us today if you’d like to view our range of products and see how we can help with your specific needs.
