Abstract
Expanded perlite has outstanding thermal and acoustic insulating properties and is widely used in the manufacturing and construction industries. The conventional perlite expansion method suffers disadvantages which affect the quality of expanded perlite products, thus limiting their performance and range of applications. A new perlite expansion process has been designed and a vertical electrical furnace for perlite expansion has been constructed in our laboratory to overcome these drawbacks: the new design enables precise control of experimental conditions, so as to prescribe the temperature profile and residence time in the heating chamber. Expanded perlite can thus be produced with various quality specifications for a range of different applications. A mathematical model for perlite grain expansion has been developed, aimed at the detailed investigation and optimization of perlite expansion in the new furnace. The dynamic model consists of ordinary differential equations for both air and particle heat and momentum balances, probing the air temperature distribution as well as the particle velocity, temperature and size along its trajectory in the heating chamber. The effect of raw material physical properties as well as operational parameters on product quality is investigated and discussed.
| Original language | English |
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| Title of host publication | Proceedings of the 5th International Conference from Scientific Computing to Computational Engineering (IC-SCCE 2012) |
| Editors | Demos T. Tsahalis |
| Place of Publication | ATHENS |
| Publisher | Learning Foundation in Mechatronics (LFME) |
| Pages | 331-338 |
| Number of pages | 8 |
| ISBN (Print) | 978-618-80115-0-2 |
| Publication status | Published - 4 Jul 2012 |