ENERGY MODELING IN A POLYMERIC MATERIAL FEEDING PROTOTYPE SYSTEM OF PNEUMATIC TRANSPORT USING FACTORAL PLANNING
The use of transport of raw materials and products in their production stages are usually necessary in industrial segments, which is done through mechanical way by using, among others, air as a transport fluid. As it is used in almost all sectors of the industry in most different steps of the process, its use represents a significant part of the electrical power consumption and, therefore, the study as of the energy efficiency of its use is of utmost importance. The present work aimed to evaluate the energy efficiency of the solid feeding system (self-made rotary valve) of a prototype test for pneumatic transport. For this purpose, mathematical correlations were obtained between the amount of material fed and the energy consumed for this purpose, using experimental planning (or DOE), in which a two-level rotational central composite factorial planning (22) was used, and linear regression, analysis of variance, residue and adjustment quality was used, in addition to the response surface methodology for evaluation and visualization of the energy behavior of the system. For this, we evaluated the behavior of three polymeric materials (high impact polystyrene, standard polystyrene and polypropylene) through experimental tests and the use of two distinct software (Action Stat and Proptimiz), to obtain linear and nonlinear mathematical models and their validations, in addition to the level and response surface curves. The results obtained (coefficient of determination of at least 0.9363 and other validation criteria of the models being met), showed the applicability and reliability of the models obtained, in addition to the verification of the possibility of modeling and studying the energy behavior of the proposed solid feeding system, depending on the rotation of the rotary valve and the amount of material to be transported, the boundary conditions of this study.