Evaluation of wood chips terminal velocity and some morphological properties in a wind tunnel experiment

Abstract

The removal of wood dust and chips from the work area is also important for occupational health safety regulation and to avoid the risk of fire and dust explosion. Knowledge of the terminal velocity is an important condition for the effective and economical operation of commonly used wood dust-chip extraction systems. While the largest particles are important from the point of view of the operation of the extraction system, knowledge of the terminal velocity of small particles (under 1 mm) is desirable from the point of view of separation and occupational health safety. New measuring and calculation method is developed in order to determine the terminal velocity of wood particles. We built an experimental device to measure the terminal velocity of wood dust-chip particles, and using the experimental results, we modified the calculated terminal velocity based on the modified equivalent particle density (100–130 kg/m³) in the 1–150 μm size range. The terminal velocity of wood particles under 150 μm more and more deviates from the theoretical values. As a result of mechanical processing, the resulting wood particles’ shape is in most cases flat. The average thickness of the wood particles is mainly determined by the sawing parameters. The flat shape of particles increases the specific surface area in a certain extent depending on the distribution parameters.