WHEN DO YOU USE ELBOWS IN A PNEUMATIC SYSTEM? “ELBOW ROOM”

“One thing you will discover, When you get next to one another, Is everybody needs some elbow room, elbow room”

- Written by Lynn Ahearns and performed by Sue Manchester for Schoolhouse Rock’s “Elbow Room”

One of the best things about pneumatic conveying systems by comparison to mechanical conveying systems, is their ability to be easily routed and/or re-routed. Need to go around, over or under something? You don’t need a whole separate conveyor, just add an elbow(s) and Voilá!

Elbows are magical in the sense that while the shortest distance between 2 points may be a straight line, it’s not always the most cost effective distance. Pillars, existing equipment, aisleways, driveways and sideways processes can cost a lot of money to move if they are in between “Point A” and “Point B”. A couple of $100 elbows can seem like a miracle compared to moving a multi-ton piece of steel.

But, much like budgeting around a letter in the mail from Ed McMahon, there is a couple of catches to putting elbows in your conveying system you should know about before you get started designing a system:

1. Wear – It may sound redundant, but elbows are where product changes direction. Because of this, there are a large number of impacts that happen inside an elbow that makes them the primary wear point for any pipeline. To help guard against this, manufacturers spend a good deal of time designing ways to beef up wear resistance (like specialty backing materials) or reduce impacts from happening at all (like vortex back designs).

2. Pressure drop – Bodies at rest stay at rest and bodies in motion stay in motion unless acted upon by an outside force (And Professor Johnson said I never listened in Physics 101). Well inside a pipe line, slamming into an elbow for a particle is about as much “Outside force” as you can get. That’s why the number of elbows in a line is the largest source of pressure drop you can get. Excessive numbers can cause the required line size to get from “Point A” to “Point B” to jump, increasing costs and horsepower requirements.

Neither of these factors is insurmountable. So before you decide to rip elbows out your system like Cavity Sam in a bad game of “Operation” if you are having problems, talk to a systems design engineer to see how we can help.

“It's the moon or bust, In God we trust, There's a new land up there!”

For more information on Pneumatic Conveying Systems Click Here.

Submitted By: Larry Eagan | Regional Sales Manager

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WHEN DO YOU USE ELBOWS IN A PNEUMATIC SYSTEM? “ELBOW ROOM”

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