Abstract
Commonly, a sorting and processing equipment for particles has an Optical Sorter. Recently, the Optical Sorter is demanded in various fields in order to improve food safety or product quality. Therefore, it is desired that the Optical Sorter has high performance to handle widely various material. To solve the issue of the Optical Sorter, a supply mechanism has to be improved to apply to widely various materials, and an efficient sorting mechanism has to be designed in order to improve the yield in the sorting and processing line and to increase the production.
In this paper, the results of a numerical simulation are discussed to develop the Optical Sorter for optimal planning, effective designing, and cost reduction. We have implemented a Distinct Element Method (DEM) simulation code to clarify the behavior of material flow in the supply section of the Optical Sorter. Moreover, we have implemented a Smoothed Particle Hydrodynamics (SPH) simulation code to clarify the behavior of the air flow ejected from an ejector nozzle in the sorting section of the Optical Sorter. We have simulated the characteristic events of each section in order to verify the validity of the numerical simulations.
In the future prospects, we have to design the Optical Sorter with an optimal design method.
