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Three questions. You get the likely failure mode, the method that clears it, and the page that covers your material in detail.
Answer the three questions and this panel becomes a diagnosis: the likely failure mode, the method that clears it, and the page covering your material.
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Most likely
Recommended method
This is a first indication from three answers, not an inspection. What we actually do is confirmed on site, against the vessel drawing and what the operators tell us.
With JavaScript enabled, this panel narrows the list to the one that matches your answers. Without it, all seven are described below — the diagrams are the same ones the tool uses.
Or simply describe the problem to us and we will tell you which it is.
Every blockage we are called to is one of these, or a combination of two. They are worth knowing by name, because naming the mode is what decides the method.
Material locks into a self-supporting arch across the vessel, spanning wall to wall above the outlet. The space beneath is empty while the level indicator still reads full. Common in fine powders that have taken up a little moisture.
A narrow central channel discharges and everything around it consolidates against the wall. The silo behaves as though it were a fraction of its diameter, and the standing material is no longer live stock. Common in damp, cohesive materials such as rock phosphate.
A coating accretes on the wall and thickens, because build-up gives fresh material something to key onto. Storage volume falls with the square of the radius, so the capacity loss is always larger than the thickness suggests — the capacity loss calculator puts a number on it.
The material stops being a bulk solid. It takes up moisture, or simply sits long enough under its own weight, and sets into a mass with real compressive strength. Fly ash and soda ash do this readily; cement does it decisively.
The blockage sits in the cone or at the extraction point rather than up in the cylinder, compacted hard by the head of material above it. Slag and sinter hoppers plug far more often than they bridge.
A dome forms high in the vessel and carries the load above it. This is the most dangerous condition to approach: the dome can release as a single mass without warning, which is precisely why nobody should be inside the vessel to deal with it.
Material draws through a narrow funnel above the outlet while the surrounding mass stands still. First-in material never leaves. On cement and raw meal this eventually shows up as an off-spec batch rather than as a flow complaint.
Two systems cover all seven, and the choice is not a preference — it follows from the mode.
In practice a hardened vessel takes both: Cardox to bring the mass down, whipping to take the residual coating off the wall. Either way nobody enters the vessel — see how we work without human entry.
Not sure which you have? Send us the vessel drawing, the material and what the operators are seeing. We have cleaned this vessel type before and will tell you plainly whether it needs one method or both. Talk to our engineers →