Key Engineering Materials Submitted: 2014-09-11

ISSN: 1662-9795, Vols. 656-657, pp 456-460 Revised: 2014-11-29

doi:10.4028/www.scientific.net/KEM.656-657.456 Accepted: 2015-02-05
© 2015 Trans Tech Publications, Switzerland Online: 2015-07-23

DESIGN OF ROTOFORMER MECHANISM AND COOLING STEEL-

CONVEYOR IN SULFUR GRANULATION SYSTEMS
Nguyen Thien Binha, Le Thanh Sonb**, Nguyen Thanh Namc*,
Vu Ngoc Thanh Thed
National Key Lab of Digital Control and System Engineering, University of Technology, Vietnam
National University Ho Chi Minh City, 268 Ly Thuong Kiet, Dictrict 10, Ho Chi Minh, Vietnam
a
[email protected], [email protected], [email protected],
d
[email protected]

Keywords: Rotoformer, rotor-former, cooling steel conveyor, sulfur granulation system

Abstracts: The sulfur granulation roller (rotoformer) mechanism and cooling steel conveyor is
important clusters in sulfur granulation system. This paper presents method to design rotoformer,
apply goal: create a continuous pressure for a regular granulation on steel conveyor. There are also
mechanism that granulates and maintains temperature so that sulfur is not stuck and not solidify in
the supplying pipes. Moreover, this paper shows the solution to cool the steel conveyor, filter
system has temperature sensors which ensure the decreasing of temperature over the length of steel
conveyor. This will help the granulation of sulfur, formed sulfur will has right size and shape.

1. Introduction
The sulfur granulation system is one of the most important clusters in sulfur process. The
system has many elements and components. This paper presents how to design a granulation drum
in consideration of two intents: stability of product and method to maintain constant temperature on
the steel conveyor. Temperature sensors are also integrated along the length of the steel-conveyor
helping to control temperature of product on a predefined process.
The granulation system consists of two main clusters: the granulation drum (rotoformer) and the
cooling steel conveyor.

2. Principles of sulfur granulation process

2.1 Description of process
Liquid sulfur from tank (1) is pumped through heating pipe to filter (3) before it is navigated to
granulation cluster (4). Pipe, filter and liquid sulfur tank have to be heated by water stream (or
heating resistor) to maintain the temperature of the sulfur flow about 130- 150o C . (Figure 1)

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 Key Engineering Materials Vols. 656-657 457

Figure 1. Operation principle of the system [2]

Heat out of solidifying and cooling process that is transferred by steel-conveyor to cooling water
tank (9). This cooling process is done by spraying cool stream water at the end of the conveyor. It
will return to the tank and continue to be pumped to the cooling water tank. In this period, there is
no connection between cooling water and sulfur. After cooling process is finished, granulated sulfur
is taken out of the steel conveyor by a steel knife (10). A standard separating agent (Silicon: 97%,
water and Tegopren: 3%) is sprayed on the steel conveyor forming a thin firm to ensure not to effect
to the granulated sulfur (11).
Cooling water (under the steel conveyor) falls to collection tank (12) below the conveyor. Under
the effect of gravity, water flows to tank (13) and it is pumped back to cooling water tanks (14) to
continue the cooling process.
The rotoformer is equipped with exhausted gas. There is a cone-pipe (15) above rotoformer and
steel conveyor is assembled with a fan.
The granulated sulfur which is separated from cooling conveyor (cooling conveyor) will be
carry to packing zone. (16)

2.2 Property of sulfur granulated

Property of granulated sulfur is used as input factors to design the system. These are some
properties of sulfur material:
- Purity: ≥ 99.9% of total mass.
- Temperature input: 125-1350C
- Pressure input: 3.5 bar g ± 0.1 bar g
- Density : 1800 kg/m3 ở 130 0C
- Viscosity: 11 cp at 130 0C
- Humidity : ≤ 0.1%
- Shape: hemisphere
- Size: 2 – 4 mm
- Angle of respond: 28o
Input temperature and pressure
Within these information, the temperature, output pressure of the materials are important
parameters to calculate for rotoformer.
458 Recent Development in Machining, Materials and Mechanical Technologies

2.3 System requirements

The designed sulfur granulation system has technical requirements that need responding .The
technical requirements will be addressed so that the design for rotoformer and steel conveyor can be
best respond. [1]
Table 1. The technical requirements applied on the designed sulfur granulation system

Input technical
Parameters Unit
requirements
Productivity 800-1000 Kg/hour
The purity of the raw materials ≥ 99.9 % wt
Input temperature of raw 0
125 – 135 C
material stream
The pressure of input raw 3.5 ± 0.1
Bar
material stream (h=19,6m)
Diameter of sulfur particle 2–4 mm

The level of granulation ≥ 98 %

Product temperature after 0

< 70 C
separation from the conveyor

3. Design Proposal
The design proposal is to maintain a constant temperature at the inlet of the steel conveyor.
Sulfur particles go through the cooling steel conveyor in which temperature is controlled to
decrease gradually in order to homogenize sulfur particles.
Based on these requirements, the sulfur granulation roller includes: heating system, cylindrical
stator (6) and perforated shell (7) which rotates concentric with the stator. Sulfur droplet
concentrates, falls down through the holes and evenly spread over the width of the conveyor (8).
During the falling, sulfur forms droplet on the conveyor surface, non-deformation and start to
solidify, finally forms sulfur particles in hemisphere shape. Rotation speed of rotoformer is
synchronized with the speed of the conveyor.
Sulfur granulation roller (rotorformer) is an important part in granulation process. It decides the
quality of particle about shape and size of sulfur particles.

Figure 2. Principles and structure of rotoformer [2]

 Key Engineering Materials Vols. 656-657 459

To maintain a constant temperature while sulfur is forming, sulfur mixture is heated to about
125 - 135oC. This is the temperature at which the sulfur is maintained in the dough state and can be
the best condition for forming.
If the temperature is lower, sulfur will gradually return to solid form and congests the pipes and
forming-holes. However the higher temperature will make the mixture become liquid and that
wastes energy.
To solve this problem, the sulfur granulation roller is designed with insulation-pipeline inside.
Heated oil is conducted into the roller by two pipeline, it heats and maintains the chamber
temperature. In addition, to control the temperature of the chamber, each 500 mm length of internal
rotoformer, a pair of sensors is integrated in external case of the chamber.
Task of the roller chamber is to ensure a constant pressure on sulfur mixture. Two ports of the
roller also have sulfur pipe lines that conduct to the chamber. The sulfur pumped into the chamber
is the product of the previous mixing-cluster that includes tanks and paddles. Chamber cluster has
many considerable factors and the most important things is the stiffness of spring and gush-nozzle
core calculation.
Along with the pressure of chamber p, pressure from the spring with stiffness k directly affects
particle diameter d and granulating capacity of the system Q. Chamber cluster is designed so that
the chamber pressure will push extraction pressure spring and therefore, will push products go
through each nozzle every time there is a difference in pressure at the time injection holes on the
roller matches with the constant nozzles.
At that time, the elastic force of the spring equals to the differential pressure sum of the system
[3]:
Flx = k .∆l = ( Pextraction _ chamber − Pnozzle ) Ahole
- ∆l is compression of the spring, determined by the limit internal size of the cluster (5-10
mm).
- k is the stiffness of the spring.
- Ahole is the area of the hole that can be adjust the aperture of the hole-πr2
Also, particle diameter can be calculated as follows : [1]

D=
So that the necessary stiffness of the spring holding the nozzles value is:
∆P.D.Pnozzle
k=
Q.∆l
In addition, the aperture size and shape of the nozzles on the extraction hole can be adjusted.
This helps to increase the diversity of size and shape of particle products.

4. The Steel Conveyor Design Plan

Steel conveyor is located just after the sulfur granulation roller cluster. Task of the steel
conveyor is to maintain a descending steady temperature from the beginning to the end of the
conveyor. That makes the sulfur turn into solid before packing.
To do this, the steel conveyor is designed with many cooling spray nozzles by cold water at
vertical and horizontal position. Cooling system sprays by dispersal method, cold water particles do
not contact with conveyor at a constant area, they are sprayed at the underneath of the conveyor.
This helps avoid warping sulfur particles when the temperature at the underneath the conveyor is
not uniform. [4]
The t1 = 70oC is necessarily decreasing temperature of the particle according to calculation
requirement and heating process with the lost heat in each meter conveyor is:

q=
- T0 is the temperature at the output of rotoformer.
- Cs is the specific heat of sulfur.
460 Recent Development in Machining, Materials and Mechanical Technologies

- L is the length of the conveyor.

- q is the heat transferred out of the conveyor per meter.
So the necessary temperature of cooling water for each meter of calculation conveyor is:
qn = q = (ton – tn).Cn

tn = ton – q/Cn = ton –

Based on water temperature, that steadily decreases per meter of conveyor and the normal
temperature of cooling water is 15oC, we can calculate the pump capacity and the chiller in each
specific working mode.

5. Conclusion
This paper points out some the problem to be solved and design options to apply for two
important structures of the sulfur extraction system: the sulfur granulation roller (rotoformer) and
the cooling conveyor (steel conveyor). The sulfur granulation roller performs two tasks:
continuously creating a constant pressure to spread by the extraction; maintaining constant
temperature to avoid congesting and solidifying sulfur in the pipeline structure. In addition, the
paper also provides the design solutions for the variable heat of the steel conveyor system and the
impurities filter system with thermal sensors, ensures temperature will regularly reduce along the
length and the width of the conveyor. The design parameters of these clusters can be set at input
terminals of other clusters: material supplying and mixing system, insulation pipes.

6. Acknowledgement
This research was supported by National Key Laboratory of Digital Control and System
Engineering (DCSELAB), HCMUT, VNU-HCM.

REFERENCES
[1] Jeff Braden, X. D. Hu, Patrick Mclaughlin, Robert O'brien, Paul Schneider, Jospeh Stack, David
Wolfe; “Method and apparatus for the production of enrobed catalyst pastilles or flakes”; patent
EP1699559A1, 13-9-2006.
[2] SandvikRotoform® process; “New performance standards in premium pastillation”;Aug. 2007,
pp. 1-16.
[3] Michael R. Smith, “Pastillation of ammonium sulfate nitrate”; patent US 8268279 B2; 18-9-
2012.
[4] N. V. Selivanov, P. V. Yakovlev; “Features of heat transfer in the granulation of sulfur”; Journal
of Engineering Physics and Thermophysics, Vol. 77, No. 5, 2004.
Recent Development in Machining, Materials and Mechanical Technologies
10.4028/www.scientific.net/KEM.656-657

Design of Rotoformer Mechanism and Cooling Steel - Conveyor in Sulfur Granulation Systems
10.4028/www.scientific.net/KEM.656-657.456