Analysis of Feed Inlet and Optimal Feeding Amount of Waste Ground Film Impurity Removal Equipment

Abstract

A tumbler screen-type residual film–impurity mixture wind separator is the key equipment for the secondary utilization of farmland residual film. During its operation, the proportion of impurities in the separated waste mulch film intermittently increases, resulting in poor working stability of the device, which may hamper long-term operation. To address the above issues, the material inside the separation unit was continuously monitored, and the main factor affecting separator performance was determined to be the challenges in the effective depolymerization of some residual film-impurity mixtures. The principles of agglomeration and depolymerization of the residual film-impurity mixtures were analyzed using computational fluid dynamics (CFD) and discrete element method (DEM) flow-solid coupling simulation methods. The key factor affecting the disaggregation of the mixture was the collision force between the residual film–impurity mixture and the trommel screen. The collision force was maximum when the residual film–impurity mixture first collided with the trommel screen when it was fed into the separation device. Furthermore, simulations were carried out for different inlet structure forms; the evaluation index was the maximum collision force of the residual film–impurity mixture agglomerate on the trommel screen. The best disaggregation effect was obtained with a square feed inlet and at a feeding rate of 202 kg/h. A prototype was built using these specifications for verification. The average value of the ratio of impurities in the residual film was 6.966%, the coefficient of variation was 7.38%, and the dispersion of statistical results was small. The ratio of impurities in the residual film was kept constant during the continuous operation of the wind separator. Thus, in this study, we analyzed the agglomerate disaggregation process and provided theoretical insights for determining the optimal structures of the inlets of various cleaning devices and the feeding volumes.