Solids

 Pumping slurries and keeping slurries agitated in tanks are two of the most difficult transport operations in chemical engineering.  Provisions must be made in the design to keep all slurries moving so as to not have them plug lines or plug the bottoms of agitated tanks.

Many times engineers designing system do not take into consideration all the transient and failure modes that may effect the slurry handling systems design.  For example, slurry tanks should have provisions to allow the re-start of the agitator in a tank bottom where the solids have settled into a cake in around the impeller.  System design methods could include high torque agitator drives, shafts and couplings, back up electrical power, or decoupling and mechanical torque multipliers to assist in the restart.  Methods to get the slurry moving in the bottom of a settled tank could include installing access for air lances to be placed into the caked up tank to begin to move the material using air then allowing the agitator start up to finish the re-suspension of material. 

To insure that the production of the needed sales specification material is achieved 100% of the time, a Statistical Process Control methodology will be used to determine the needed production targets.