Coffee beans breaking apart due to attrition

Particle Attrition

Your Partner for Particles
Overview

Why Particle Attrition Testing?

Particle attrition results with friable bulk materials, such as plastic pellets, coffee beans, fertilizer granules and other agglomerated solids, during routine handling.

Particle attrition can be caused by variety of mechanisms including compression, impact, and shear. The effects can be costly, such as increased dusting, powder caking, reduced solubility, decreased product performance, degraded appearance, or even creation of safety hazards like dust explosions.

Typical factors affecting particle attrition include:

  • Particle hardness
  • Particle shape and size
  • Energy of particle impact
  • Surface impact
  • Particle bed impact
  • Surface hardness and roughness
  • Particle chemistry
  • Propensity to melt or smear
Granulated sugar turned into powder sugar do to attrition during handling

Granulated sugar turned into powder sugar do to attrition during handling.

Animal feed pellets often pose handling issues due to a propensity for breaking and creating fines.

Approach

Particle Attrition Tests

Your material’s attrition behavior can be determined through the following tests:

  • Impact:  evaluate particle attrition during filling of silos, hoppers, and chutes
  • Hopper flow:  evaluate particle attrition due to funnel or mass flow in a hopper
  • Compression:  evaluate particle attrition due to loads acting on particle or bed
  • Pneumatic conveying:  evaluate particle attrition as function of velocity, loading

Particle attrition tests are performed with a physical model to investigate the effects of major test variables.  We measure particle size distributions on pre- and post-attrition test samples or provide samples to your laboratory for proprietary analysis.

Results

Particle Attrition Test Results

The particle attrition test results are presented in detailed report containing:

  • Description of attrition test equipment and test method
  • Data presented graphically or in tabular format
  • Qualitative observations of unique test phenomena
  • Conclusions and recommendations

A Jenike & Johanson engineer will review the test results with you and answer any of your questions.  We will also discuss the application of the attrition test results to your project.

Jenike & Johanson engineer
Jenike & Johanson engineer

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