GB756791A - Improvements in or relating to method and apparatus for disintegrating solid materials - Google Patents

Abstract

756,791. Pulverizers. TEXACO DEVELOPMENT CORPORATION. May 31, 1954 [June 8, 1953], No. 16033/54. Class 59. Particles of solid material are disintegrated by forming a flowable mixture of the particles in a vaporizable liquid, heating the mixture to vaporize the liquid and form a dispersion of the particles in the resulting vapour, injecting a relatively confined stream of the dispersion into a chamber, separately injecting one or more streams of a gas at high velocity into the chamber, and impinging the injected streams against each other to develop turbulence and fragment the particles by impact with one another. As shown in Fig. 1, the particles to be ground are mixed intimately with a vaporizable liquid to form a slurry in a tank 11 and discharged by a pump 13 through two pipes 15, 17 which lead through a furnace 19 to a chamber 21 ; within the furnace the streams passing through the pipes are heated to above the vaporizing point of the liquid so that a flowing dispersion of the particles in a gas passes through two outlet nozzles 23, 25 into the chamber 21 ; the nozzles are inclined towards the outlet 22 of the chamber and are preferably provided with wide and thin outlets so that the dispersions are directed towards each other in sheet-like streams. The grinding effect is augmented by one or more high velocity gas jets discharging through nozzles 31, 33 located down stream of the nozzles 23, 25 and supplied from a header 37 mounted inside the chamber 21. The streams then pass through an outlet pipe 39 to a separator 41. The liquid used for the slurry is selected according to the material being ground. water being used for relatively stable materials such as coal, talc, barite and oyster shells, kerosene or mineral oil for metals, and cold liquefied gases such as propane, butane or air with materials such as waxes which are soft at high temperature ; the gas injected through the nozzles 31, 33 may be steam or air. When the slurry liquid is led by a single pipe through the furnace to the chamber 21, Fig. 3 (not shown) an annular series of high velocity gas jets acts upon the dispersion stream. In the modification shown in Fig. 5, the dispersion flows through a conduit 69 having a flared mouth 71 opening into the top of the disintegrator chamber 73 and the high velocity stream supplied from a header 75 passes into the dispersion through an annular series of ducts 77.