Electromagnetic Separation

Design & simulation solutions for Electromagnetic Separation.

Electromagnetic separation systems must achieve uniform magnetic field strength, optimise particle size response and balancing processing speed with separation quality. Engineers designing electromagnetic separation systems must consider the material properties, energy consumption, safety, and integration with existing processes while ensuring cost-effectiveness and regulatory compliance. Continuous research and a multidisciplinary approach are essential to successfully address these complexities and enhance the efficiency of separation technologies.

Materials Capture Effectiveness

Separation often relies on manual tuning of the magnetic field. Physical testing is costly and it is hard to determine why particles are missed as engineers are not able to visualise the particle-magnet interactions or the effects of high flow conditions. Inefficient separation leads to material loss, reduced product purity and higher operating costs, in addition to increasing the risk of highly valuable products escaping and endangering compliance.

Rocky can simulate magnetically susceptible particles under real world conditions. When combined with electromagnetic field data (such as Ansys Maxwell) engineers can track the movement of ferrous or conductive particles, visualise separation efficiency across a range of flow rates and magnet strengths and determine the effects of shape, mass and flow on the magenetic pick up. This results in higher separation efficiency and improved product purity, faster time to market, more efficient design and lower material losses.

Identifying Bottlenecks and Flow Disruptions

Flow patterns near magnets can cause particle build up or flow channelling, leading to inconsistent performance. High throughput designs often struggle with material segregation or misalingment of particles. These issues reduce the capture efficiency and lead to increased machine wear, clogs and downtime.

DEM simulation provides the engineer high level design insights, enabling a design that is stable, produces high throughput, eliminates common choke points and buildup while providing confidence in real world performance.

Optimising Equipment Geometry for Operating Conditions

Physical changes to separator layout or magnet placement are expensive and hard to test. Designing for specific particle types is limited due to the generic nature of designs and performance across different materials, particle blends, moisture levels or feed rates is hard to predict. Design with generic inputs leads to poorly tuned and generalised separation systems that can miss high value particles or capture waste, reducing profitability and throughput.

Rocky DEM can simulate a wide range of materials and blends, moisture effects and field configurations including, field strength, orientation and magnetic spacing. Simulation will also enable the engineer to evaluate multiple material streams and plant configurations, ensuring that the design is tailored to each application to produce high yield across varying input streams. Rocky DEM also provides faster time to market of the finished product.

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