How Vacuum Conveying Works

With vacuum conveying, materials are drawn to the delivery point through a totally enclosed pipeline, in a clean, contained stream of air generated by a vacuum blower package.

In vacuum conveying, no moving parts contact the materials, no dust escapes into the atmosphere and no contamination can enter the system.

The Advantages Of Vacuum Conveying

Efficiency
Safety
Hygiene
Cost effectiveness
Flexibility
Automation
Dust free operation
No contamination

Elements of a Vacuum Conveying System

From pick-up probe to piping to receivers and vacuum blowers, Coperion K-Tron offers a wide range of equipment for pneumatic conveying needs, whether for automated refill of feeding systems or as stand alone conveying applications. The following list describes the varied elements available from Coperion K-Tron for building a complete conveying system for loss-in-weight feeder refill (pictured in the diagram below).

Material Pick-up
From simple suction wands for free flowing materials to fully fluidized feed bins (1), silo pick-up pots (2) or bag dump stations (3) with prefeeders for powders, Coperion K-Tron offers a wide variety of equipment to ensure reliable material pick-up into the conveying air.

Conveying Line
Connecting one or multiple material pick up stations to a vacuum receiver. To ensure blockage-free conveying, diverter valves (4) and line clearance valves (5) are available in addition to the piping (6).

Vacuum Receivers
Various models of central (7) and self-contained receivers are available to separate the material from the conveying air stream, alternating between suction and discharge modes of operation.

Sequence & Vent Valves
Sequence & vent valves (8) allow the air stream to bypass and vent the vacuum receiver during the discharge cycle.

Blower Packages
Vacuum blower packages include the pump -- PD blower (9), sliding vane or rotary lobe blower(10) -- to produce the air stream as well a bypass valve (11) to allow the blower to run while no receiver is conveying and a secondary filter (12) to protect the vacuum pump from entrance of foreign bodies.

Controls
LSR controller is available to control a single central or self-contained unit. To control the sequence of a multi-component system microprocessor (MPC) or programmable logic (PLC) controls (13) are available which are programmed to suit the client’s process. Siemens, Mitsubishi and Allen Bradley PLC controls are available.

Special Pneumatic Conveying Projects

Unique problems are a welcome challenge to Coperion K-Tron; they often introduce us to a whole new area of business.

Whether replacing outdated technology or mechanizing manual operations, our resourceful designers will engineer a custom vacuum conveying solution.

Examples of Challenging Vacuum Conveying Projects

Fragile foodstuffs such as nuts and spaghetti shapes were being handled using cumbersome, difficult to clean bucket elevators... until we designed a gentle pneumatic conveying system that caused no product damage.

Hot melt adhesive pellets were always manually handled, exposing operators to fumes and splashes of hot molten glue... until we developed vacuum conveying equipment which ensures continuous direct transfer of the pellets to the point of use.