4 The design of storage bins and

hoppers
4.1 Introduction
The storage bin, silo or hopper is one of the most important items of
equipment in any bulk solids handling installation, since a poorly flowing
hopper can have repercussions extending throughout the plant. All too often
hoppers are 'squeezed in' after the remainder of the system has been designed,
and this can result in various flow problems, such as those described generally
as 'arching' or 'rat-holing' (section 2.3.4). Obviously, if this occurs, even the
most sophisticated and expensive equipment downstream of the hopper will
be unlikely to perform effectively because of the erratic supply of material. Part
of the problem is often a lack of appreciation by designers and operators that,
for a system to operate satisfactorily, bulk solid must flow from the hopper
when required and in a predictable manner. Thus, as with any other part of the
handling system, gravity-flow storage hoppers should be designed or selected
to handle the actual product under consideration.
With many free-flowing materials, lack of detailed attention to the design of
the storage facility is oflittle consequence, since the free-flow characteristics of
such materials enable discharge to be effected as and when required. For some
materials the flow/discharge pattern within the hopper is important. For
example, it is evident that for perishable foodstuffs a mass-flow pattern is more
desirable than core-flow, since the 'first-in first-out' discharge sequence
minimizes the residence time of the material in store. As indicated in
Chapter 2, for a given product it is the angle of the converging section of the
hopper that largely dictates the discharge pattern.
With materials that have a tendency to be cohesive (such as those having
fine particle size or high moisture content), the consolidating forces exerted
during storage in a hopper may result in the bulk acquiring sufficient strength to
obstruct the flow. This can happen either by the material arching (bridging)
across the opening, or by a stable 'rat-hole' developing from the opening up to
the free-surface of the bulk material. It is the size of this opening that
determines whether or not an obstruction will occur; above a critical size the
product will flow unobstructed, whereas below this size some kind of
obstruction to flow may be anticipated. If such obstructions are to be avoided
it is therefore necessary to be able to predict the critical dimensions of hopper
outlet for the product under consideration.
In this chapter is presented a simplified form of the procedure evolved by
Jenike [1] for determining (i) the outlet dimension(s) of the hopper to give

C. R. Woodcock et al., Bulk Solids Handling

© Chapman & Hall 1987
 THE DESIGN OF STORAGE BINS AND HOPPERS 155
unimpeded gravity flow, and (ii) the cone angle to give the required flow
pattern. It is important to realize that the analytical work leading to lenike's
design procedure is very complex. However, it has yet to be superseded by
anything of lesser complexity. A simplified form of the lenike method will be
presented in this chapter after a discussion of the various factors which
influence the overall hopper geometry. For a much more rigorous treatment
the reader is directed to [2J or [3].
A detailed consideration of the structural design of storage vessels is beyond
the scope of this introductory textbook and therefore only a brief mention of
the topic will be made in this chapter. References are given, however, to enable
the interested reader to undertake further study on, for example, the
application of finite-element methods and computer-aided design techniques
to the design and construction of storage vessels.
The final sections of this chapter deal with the selection and use of feeders
and discharge aids. There are many occasions in industrial practice when it is
necessary to control the rate at which a bulk solid is fed from a storage bin or
hopper; for example, when filling bags or supplying product to a processing
plant. Two aspects of hopper discharge then become important:
(i) The flow of material from the hopper cannot usually be allowed to take
place freely but must be 'throttled' to the required rate by some type of
'feeder'.
(ii) Once an appropriate feeder has been selected, it must be ensured that
product flows from the hopper to the feeder continuously at an adequate
rate. The design of the hopper system must be undertaken with care if
problems of flow obstruction through arching or rat-holing are to be
avoided.
(Although these aspects of hopper discharge have been listed separately, it
cannot be over-emphasized that the hopper and the feeder must be designed to
work together as an integrated system.)
Attention has previously been given briefly to the matter of estimating the
discharge rate from a storage hopper. Although the method of designing
hoppers for unobstructed flow is now well-established and reliable, the
accurate prediction of the actual rate at which a bulk solid discharges still
represents a formidable challenge. A number of technical papers have been
published on this problem, and some simplified methods of estimating the flow
have been outlined in Chapter 2, but there is as yet no useful general approach
that could be considered within the scope of this book. Attention is therefore
focused upon the measurement and control of solids flow from storage
hoppers, and in section 4.9 descriptions will be given of a number of different
types of feeding device.
Whilst with many bulk solids the avoidance of flow problems is simply a
matter of ensuring that the angle of the sloping walls is sufficient and the size of
the outlet is large enough, other cases are frequently encountered where the use