Cellular wheel sluice

An axial blow-through cellular wheel feeder for feeding particulate bulk solid material, comprising:

• a housing that comprises a cylindrical wall extending concentrically about a horizontal axis, and planar vertical side walls at axial ends of said cylindrical wall, wherein said cylindrical wall and said side walls bound a cylindrical space in said housing;
• a bulk solid material supply chute that is adapted to feed the particulate bulk solid material and that communicates into said cylindrical space in said housing through a supply opening in said cylindrical wall;
• a cellular wheel that comprises plural cellular wheel webs extending radially outwardly from a central wheel hub that is supported rotatably about said horizontal axis in said cylindrical space in said housing, and respective gap seals arranged respectively at radially outer edges of said cellular wheel webs, wherein respective dosing chambers are respectively formed and bounded radially between said central wheel hub and said cylindrical wall and circumferentially between respective successive neighboring pairs of said cellular wheel webs, wherein said gap seals are made of a hard material that has a hardness equal to that of a metal, wherein said gap seals are arranged to leave a radial spacing gap between each one of said gap seals and said cylindrical wall, and wherein respective radially outer edges of said gap seals are configured as respective shear-cutting edges that are oriented facing circumferentially forward in a rotation direction of said cellular wheel about said horizontal axis;
• a counter-cutting member with a counter-cutting edge arranged in said supply chute adjacent to said supply opening at a chute-bounding side wall of said supply chute that is circumferentially downstream with respect to said rotation direction of said cellular wheel about said horizontal axis, wherein said counter-cutting edge is positioned relative to said shear-cutting edges and oriented circumferentially opposite said shear-cutting edges so as to cooperate with said shear-cutting edges to shear-cut particles of the particulate bulk solid material between said counter-cutting edge and said shear-cutting edges;
• a blow-in hole that is provided below said horizontal axis in a first one of said vertical side walls;
• a blow-out hole that is provided below said horizontal axis and axially across from said blow-in hole in a second one of said vertical side walls;
• and
• an injector nozzle that is mounted to said housing at said blow-in hole and that has an internal nozzle passage that converges to a throat and diverges from said throat to a nozzle outlet opening at an end of said injector nozzle arranged at said blow-in hole, wherein said injector nozzle is positioned and adapted to blow a stream of transport gas into and through a respective one of said dosing chambers in communication with said blow-in hole, and out through said blow-out hole in a blowing transport direction parallel to said horizontal axis so as to be adapted to cause a reduced pressure of the transport gas around said blow-in hole in said respective dosing chamber and thereby reduce an amount of leakage of said transport gas through said radial spacing gaps past said gap seals, and to transport the particulate bulk solid material with the transport gas out of said respective dosing chamber through said blow-out hole in said transport direction.