ABSTRACT
After conventional vibrational dewatering, the residual moisture of bulk materials often turns out to be only little lower than achievable by gravitational dewatering. It is well documented that the mechanism of drop formation and dripping off the screen is usually the limiting factor of dewatering on vibrating sieves. Pilot scale studies have verified that the additional use of capillary suction media can considerably lower residual moisture compared to conventional vibrational dewatering. All water having left the bulk due to vibrational acceleration thus gets removed by active transport instead of having to drip off. In the work presented, the efficiency of such a modified vibrating sieve has been studied for dewatering coal and quartz sands. The influence of the actual machine parameters and operation settings can be derived from the effect of three characteristic process parameters. With throughputs ranging up to 5 t/h, the transferability to industrial scale has been proven for the process presented.
