Generally in the winter time, we see an increase in production issues due to static. When the ambient air becomes drier, static ions build more easily on the surface. For this application, the customer was drying a wood based compost with compressed air. His compressed air system used a heated desiccant dryer to remove the moisture to a dew point of -40 deg. F (-40 deg. C). (That means the compressed air system would not see any water unless the temperature was below -40 deg.) He would blow the very dry air into the bed to remove any moisture. This would make the compost very light and reduce decomposing.
The problem occurred during shipment. He would convey the compost up a conveyor belt to a chute. The chute had a line to direct the compost inside a rail car. Because of the non-conductive material of the conveyor belt and the extremely dry material of wood, a large amount of static was being generated. With like charges repelling each other, it would create a bridge in the chute, causing it to plug and backup. My suggestion was to use our Super Ion Air Cannon. It would remove the static charges that was being generated, and also create a small positive pressure to keep the compost moving. With the amount of material that he was conveying, he installed 4 Super Ion Air Cannons for each chute. The problem was solved and the operation was not hindered. If you have any issues with your system, you can contact one of our Application Engineers to see if we can help at 800-903-9247.
John Ball
Application Engineer
Email: johnball@exair.com
Twitter: twitter.com/exair_jb