Pulverizers
A pulverizer or grinder is a mechanical device for the grinding of many different types of materials. For example, a pulverizer mill is used to pulverize coal for combustion in the steam-generating furnaces of coal power plants. Pulverizers are commonly used in the coal industry but can be suited for a variety of applications. The main purpose of these machines is to process materials and act as size reduction equipment. A pulverizer reduces materials like Limestone and gypsum at high speeds resulting in smaller particle sizes.
Typically, Pulverizers are sorted into three major groups:
- Grinding Mills
- Crushers
- Impactors
Note that within these groups are many specific types of pulverizers, defined by their application, such as coal pulverisers, concrete pulverizers, food pulverizers, and plastic pulverizers.
Grinding mills break down materials using friction, which they generate via grinding media. Any number of coarse materials may serve as grinding media, but some, such as brass, bronze, ceramics, flint, and non-sparking lead, are more common than others. The sub-types are as,
Crushers are used to crush large, dense materials like rock and stone, until it is dust or gravel. Usually, they are used to simplify the differentiation of materials or to reduce materials and/or prepare them for recycling or disposal. The most common type of crusher is the jaw crusher.
Impactors are quite like crushers, except that they reduce materials differently. Instead of crushing, which uses pressure generated by two opposing forces, they use impaction, a process that transmits force via collision. To carry out impaction, impactors, or impact crushers, contain the material to be crushed inside a cage, with which they facilitate collisions. As the material gets smaller, it falls out of openings on the bottom, side, or end of the cage. Along with the above common pulverizer types are those types that are less common, but more specialized, such as,