Inline pneumatic batching system

This inline pneumatic batching system allows simultaneous weigh batching of major ingredients supplied in bulk bags and manual dumping of pre-weighed minor ingredients, and blending of the material, while a subsequent batch is accumulated. Each of the bulk bag dischargers is mounted on load cells, allowing loss-of-weight batching from either or both bulk bags. A system controller starts and stops each discharger’s rotary airlock valve to weigh ingredients, first at high feed rate for rapid filling, then at dribble feed rate, stopping material flow once the accurate batch weight has been discharged. System software allows mid-batch bag changes. Minor, pre-weighed ingredients are added at the manual dumping station after the major ingredients have been discharged from the bulk bags. The dilute-phase, vacuum conveyor line terminates at a filter receiver that accumulates the batch before discharging it through a slide gate valve into a ribbon blender, allowing concurrent batching and blending of materials, cutting cycle times by half.