ACOUSTICALLY INDUCED POWDER DISPENSING AND METERING

摘要

The need to meter and dispense dry powders or mixtures of powders occurs in a wide range of processes and industries. These include the preparation of pharmaceutical products, the mixing of pigments for paints, inks and glazes, the incorporation of processing additives and pigments into polymer processing lines such as extrusion and in solid free-forming processes. In this paper, the authors describe a method for both on/off and flow rate control of dry powders using acoustic vibration. The flow controller consists of a glass tube attached to an electromagnetic vibration transducer. The factors affecting vibration-induced powder dispensing, such as frequency, amplitude and waveform of the acoustic vibration was investigated. The results indicate that this is a promising method and the flow of powder can be controlled by the parameters of the 'music'.