AirSweep Proves to be the King of Carbon Black Material

Vibrators couldn’t handle carbon black, but AirSweep achieves on-demand flow in less than a week

A global manufacturer of carbon black additives supplies over 2 million tons to leading companies in the paint, plastic, tire, rubber, and ink industries every year.

Problem

Carbon black’s flow properties make it particularly difficult to handle. It has a tendency to fluidize, and form deposits along the conveyor lines and storage vessels. Since it does not dissolve in water and solvents, cleaning can be time-consuming and expensive.

Carbon black also has a tendency to cake and pack while unloading, and bridge or rathole in the hoppers. For this manufacturer, bridging over the silo discharge would cause long and frequent process delays. The entire process would shut down because the rest of the machines were starved of raw materials.

Solution

After finding out that vibrators were ineffective, the manufacturer switched to AirSweep—and saw immediate results.

Three AirSweep VA-51 units were installed on a weigh hopper. The air pulses easily activated the material for reliable, on-demand flow.

And it was quick – installation took less than 48 hours.

Results

AirSweep has proven to be so reliable, that the company had the AirSweep system retrofitted to several other process hoppers at the facility.

“I’m extremely happy at the responsiveness of Control Concepts and the local distributor they brought in to work with us,” said the lead process engineer. “Their helpfulness got our project off the ground in less than a week.”