Particulate and water mixing in the feed box for a screen

- Pre-mixing of the solid feed with water in a screen feedbox is investigated.
- A coupled DEM/SPH model is used with DEM for resolved solids and SPH for slurry.
- The feed box has a series of intermediate ledges with intermediate addition of water.
- Wide nozzle sprays provides more uniform delivery of water to the rock stream.
- The effect of feed rate on performance was also assessed.

Coupled DEM/SPH flow models of rock/slurry flow are developed in order to investigate the effect of feed rate on the operation of the feed box which is used to pre-mix the solid feed with water before it is presented as slurry to the screen. For the feed box, rocks were fed into the feed box from a conveyor and travelled through a series of intermediate ledges before being combined with water from an assembly of pipe jets and spray nozzles, and then exiting to the screen. Two dispersal geometries were considered for distributing the water. Wide nozzle sprays were found to provide much more uniform delivery of water to the rock stream than jets from cylindrical pipes. The details of the feed and slurry mixture exiting the bottom chute does not appear to change significantly with conveyor feed rate.