INTRODUCTION TO PNEUMATIC CONVEYING AND THE GUIDE, 9 1.2.5 Conveying capability Ithas already been mentioned that pneumatic conveying systems are capable of con- veying almost any material. Distance, however, does impose a practical limit. Although hydraulic conveying systems are capable of conveying material at a flow rate in excess of 100tonne/h, over a distance of 100km, or more in a single stage, the limit for pneu- matic conveying is typically about 14km for most applications, With water having a density that is about 800 times greater than that of air, at free air conditions, the difference in density between the conveyed material and that of the conveying fluid is widely different. As a consequence conveying air velocities are a factor of about ten times greater than those required for water in order to convey material in suspension. 1.2.5.1 High pressure conveying The biggest problem with high pressure for pneumatic conveying derives from Equation (1.2). Water can be modelled, as being essentially incompressible and so there is little change in velocity along the length of the pipeline. Water pressures up to about 150 bar are therefore used. With air being compressible very few systems, any- where in the world, operate at a pressure much above 5 bar gauge when delivering material to a reception point at atmospheric pressure. In terms of pneumatic conveying, high pressure virtually means anything above 1 bar gauge. This is a typical operating limit with possibly the majority of pneumatic conveying systems in industry. This corresponds with a doubling in conveying air velocity, as mentioned above. With any higher air supply pressure it would always be recommended that the pipeline should be stepped to a larger bore part way along its length in order to prevent high values of velocity from occurring. Apart from magnifying problems of erosive wear and particle degradation, velocity has an adverse effect on pressure drop. The appropriate relationship here is: oe EPC? A ee" (4) where Ap is the pressure drop, L, the length of straight pipeline, p, the air density, the conveying air velocity and d, the pipeline bore. Itwill be scen from this that velocity is on the top line of the equation and its value has to be squared. This, therefore, is an extremely important term and anything that can be done to keep conveying air velocities to as low a value as possible is generally to be advised, In this respect the stepping of a pipeline is generally an advantage, not just in minimizing wear and degradation, but generally in terms of achieving an improvement in conveying performance. A particular advantage of pneumatic conveying systems is that they can be operated at high pressure if required. There are many instances in industry where itis necessary to deliver bulk particulate materials into vessels that operate at high pressure. Again, by reference to Equation (1.2), it will be seen that this situation does not present a