The counterflow cooling of feed pellets

Abstract

Counterflow pellet coolers have recently become commercially available in the feed industry. The design has mainly been by trial and error. This study presents the first published experimental and analytical investigation of counterflow pellet cooling. It establishes that the most important operating and design parameters of a counterflow pellet cooler with respect to the cooling rate and moisture loss are the cooling-bed depth and the air-to-pellet mass flowrate ratio. For the conditions evaluated, a flowrate ratio of 0·5 was insufficient to cool feed pellets adequately with a 0·30 m bed depth, while a bed depth of 0·15 m sufficed at a ratio of 1·1. In the counterflow cooler evaluated a bed depth of 0·45 m maximized the moisture loss. © 1992 Silsoe Research Institute.