"carl mciver" wrote in message
nk.net...

"Bruce L. Bergman" wrote in message
...

| Silly Wild-ass Guess Idea #1: Try putting a few water misting heads
| (like they use on outdoor patios) spraying into the inlet airflow?
| Add just enough moisture to cool off hot bits going in (without making
| mud) and the moisture should cut the static electricity levels. Link
| the mist water solenoid to the fan motor contactor, so they run with
| the fan motor.

That seemed like a good idea for a minute until I realized that
moisture
and metal equals corrosion, and being that there's so much surface area
it'll corrode really fast. Piles of damp metal powder corroding quickly
gets really hot, and if not cooled down will go into meltdown, then
possibly
fire, which would be a then be a real mother to put out.
Now if you had a non-reactive coolant, that might be another story.
Metal damp with anything might not get so much from the scrap yard as dry
stuff, though.

We deal with a lot of fine, water-reactive metals in the pyrotechnics
business. The common wisdom is to _flood_ the reactants with water, rather
than simply misting them.

Creating very fine metal dusts abrasively always invites ignition. Many
metals, and some organic compounds and elements will become pyrophoric
(ignite upon contact with air) as soon as they are divided into sub-micron
sized particles. I've personally witnessed 2-micron magnesium ignite simply
by fluffing up the powder in air. Sub-micron titanium is horrific stuff.

Our dust collectors capture particles on filters being continually flooded
with a sheet of water. The material is plumbed away and allowed to react in
a large volume of water. Then the sludge is sedimented, dried, and
disposed of in a suitable manner, if it cannot be reprocessed.

LLoyd