Challenges for material handling of recycelt plastic flakes and biomass materials
André Katterfeld, Otto von Guericke University, Magdeburg, Germany
Flash Presentation: Systems Engineering & Computational Methods
Video Conference Room (BigBlueButton): https://bbb.mpi-magdeburg.mpg.de/meeting/SmartPSE2022-Katterfeld
Abstract: The handling of recycled materials will increase tremendously with the growing realisation of raw materials circuits in a more sustainable economy. The same trend can be recognised for biomass materials as an alternative source of energy. The handling of recycled materials such as shredded plastic flakes or fibrous biomass materials is a real challenge due to the special properties of such materials, e.g. high porosity, easy to compact, soft and flexible but "springy" behaviour. This behaviour makes the design of transport and storage equipment very challenging. The proper functioning of transport and storage equipment is required to feed continuous processes. Although only a "secondary" technology many mechanical, thermal and chemical process steps depend on the functioning of the whole process chain. The presentation will give an overview about the named challenges, show why classical continuum approaches for the design of storage and transport equipment will not work and how numerical simulations like DEM could be used to provide a better understanding of the mechanical behaviour of such materials.