Patent Application
20120175446
The present invention relates to a particle separator for use in a grinding mill, particularly to a particle separator for use in a grinding mill.
With increasing quality of life, demands on industrial products have become stricter. In particular, food and medical products have become subjected to environmental standards. The GMP standard regulates grinding mills as to (1) ingredients, (2) noise, (3) iron contents (resulting from wear), (4) heat, and (5) pollution. Meeting those standards is an urgent requirement.
Conventionally, grinding mills are designed according to the following five considerations: (1) torque, (2) centrifugal force, (3) grinding force, (4) heat, and (5) noise. Besides, separators for grinding mills are designed for effectiveness of separating various particle sizes, with the ability to grind out tine particles being decisive. Conventional separators do not effectively separate desired tine front yet too coarse particles, hence resulting in decreased grinding effectivity and in a lack of capability to meet demands for thoroughly refining particles.
U.S. Pat. No. 7,118,055 discloses an upright pressure type mill with separator. Therein a separator has a plurality of blades rotating at high speed generating air flow vortices, which take along particles that are suspended in air, whereas relatively coarse particles are by centrifugal force driven outward and fall into a grinding mill to be ground again, so that only relatively fine particles are separated and collected by the separator.
That kind of separator of the grinding mill effectively sorts particles according to coarseness and fineness thereof. However, for controlling or adjusting sizes of separated particles, the force of air flow for suspending particles has to be adjusted or the rotational speed of the blades has to be regulated. But, independent from whether force of air flow or rotational speed of blades are adjusted, due to hydrodynamic calculations, precise parameters are hard to obtain and instabilities happen easily.
The present inventor has deliberated on that and devised a separator for a grinding mill that allows for easy adjusting of sorted particle sizes, so that convenience of operating grinding mill separators is increased.
The main object of the present invention is to provide a particle separator which is easy to operate and precisely adjustable for sizes of sorted particles, mainly comprising two support rings, mounted at upper and lower positions on a driving shall, and a plurality of blades, mounted along a periphery of the support rings. The support rings have a plurality of mounting holes and the blades each have on a side close to the support rings several holding rods to be quickly inserted into the mounting holes, so that the plurality of blades are allowed to sway while being mounted on the support rings. The mounting holes of the support rings are arranged in a quantity that is a divisible number, so that the blades are installed with any divisor of said quantity of mounting holes being the distance of any two neighboring blades, when inserted into the mounting holes, allowing a user quickly to adjust number and mutual distance of blades installed on the support rings, while the blades are evenly distributed along the support rings.
The present invention can be more fully understood by reference to the following description and accompanying drawings.
As shown in
As shown in
When the grinding device 20 is started, the drum fan 43 of the collecting apparatus 40 starts simultaneously, blowing air into a lower space in the main body 11, which is subsequently sucked out from the air outlet 12 at the top of the main body 11, so that an upward flow of air within the main body 11 is generated. The rising air flow takes particles ground by the grinding device 20 through the separator 30, letting particles that have been ground down to a predetermined diameter pass through the separator 30 to be collected in the collecting apparatus 40, whereas particles which have not yet been ground finely enough are sorted out by the separator 30 and fall back into the grinding device 20 to be ground anew.
Referring to
Referring to
Referring to
As shown in
Due to the vortex generated by the plurality of blades 33, a centrifugal force results, driving particles from a vertical center outward. As is known to the inventor, underpressure increases when the vertical center is approached, hence particles that are taken along by the circular air flow are the lighter, the closer the particles are located to the vertical center, whereas, the further away located from the center (that is, the closer to the periphery), the heavier particles are. Therefore, as long as an ascending force is greater than weight, particles will float and be drawn away by air (indicated in
The main characteristic of the separator 30 of the present invention lies in the ability of the blades 33 to be replaced quickly and to sway while mounted on the support rings 32. Furthermore, the support rings 32 each have a plurality of mounting holes 324 for mounting the blades 33 of a non-prime number. Thus by varying the number of blades 33 in the mounting holes 324, various mutual distances of blades 33 for mounting on the support rings 32 are realized.
Therefore, a user is enabled to adjust number and density of blades 33 for controlling particle sizes, while blades are uniformly distributed around the support rings 32.
As shown in
As shown in
Referring again to
Furthermore, for flexible adjusting of number and density of the blades 33 on the support rings 32, while maintaining uniform mutual distances of blades 33, the mounting holes 324 are distributed around the support rings 32 at equal angular distances and the number of mounting holes 324 is a divisible number, so that, when the separator 30 is adjusted to a different number and density of blades 33, based on the mutual distances of the mounting holes 324 as units, serving as distances between neighboring blades 33, the number and density of blades 33 is flexibly adjusted, while weight balance is maintained with the blades 33 being mounted on the support rings 32.
A sample calculation of the number of mounted blades and mounting holes is as follows.
The sample table takes 42 holes as an example and demonstrates how to calculate the distances between blades 33. As shown in the table, the number 42, according to arithmetic, is factored as 2×3×7. The divisors of 42 are 1, 2, 3, 6, 7, 14 and 21.
When the number and density of blades 33 is modified, the divisors from above Table 1 are taken as the distances between blades 33. For example, if 42 blades are to be mounted on the support rings, the divisor 1 as distance of mounting is obtained, so that between any two blades 0 holes are left. If, if 21 blades are to be mounted, the divisor 2 as distance of mounting is obtained, so that between any two blades 1 holes are left. If, it 14 blades are to be mounted, the divisor 3 as distance of mounting is obtained, so that between any two blades 2 holes are left. The remaining blade numbers and distances are easily obtained from the table.
Furthermore, as shown in Table 2, if the support rings 32 have 72 mounting holes 324, then by factoring the number 72 as 23×32, the divisors, besides 1 and 72 itself, are 2, 3, 4, 6, 8, 12, 18, 24 and 36.
Thus, for mounting the blades 33, the numbers and distances for inserting blades in the support rings 32 are obtained from the following table.
Referring to
Thus, when a user plans to modify the number and density of blades 33, the sequence of divisors obtained from the number of mounting holes 324 guide the distances between neighboring blades 33.
In above embodiment, the table allows to judge quickly on various combinations of inserting blades 33, along with various blade numbers and installations. For example, if 36 blades 33 are to be mounted, the divisor 2 as distance of mounting of blades 33 is obtained, so that between any two blades 1 holes are left (as shown in
The higher the number of blades 33 mounted on the support rings 32 is (the denser the blades 33 are arranged), the stronger the vortex generated by rotating of the blades 33 is, and consequently the centrifugal force thereof. Thus the rising air flow in the central axis of the blades 33 contains a relatively large amount of outward extracted air, reducing the flow through the center of the support rings 32, resulting in finer separated particles.
On the other hand, with a relatively small number of blades 33 being mounted on the support rings 32, the generated vortex is weaker, increasing the flow through the center of the support rings 32, which takes along relatively coarse particles, resulting in coarser separated particles.
Therefore, the present invention allows, by adjusting the number of blades 33 mounted on the support rings 32, to control the degree of fineness of separated particles. Given the number of mounting holes 324 on the support rings 32, a user, for mounting the blades 33, easily calculates the number of holes between neighboring blades 33, avoiding a non-uniform distribution of blades, which would result in uneven rotation, vibrations, imprecise rotation and even damages.
The present invention provides a particle separator which is flexibly arrangeable and controllable as to fineness of separated particles, while being easy to use.
