Vortex Dehydration

Technology also known as "Windhexe", as invented by farmer Frank Polifka in Kansas. From Wikipedia: Grinding and dehydrating apparatus operated with compressed air typically used in waste reduction and food processing. The Windhexe was unveiled in 2002 and operates via compressed air injected into a conical chamber which tumbles material at high speeds causing simultaneous dehydration and disintegration. The limited application of the Windhexe is in waste reduction and in animal processing with more proposed uses being explored commercially.

Requires: Compressed Air

Potential Uses

• food processing (does not work with very fatty feedstock)
• biomass processing (turns everything into powder), bio-energy (biodiesel)
• minerals processing (for resource extraction; example: pulverize copper-containing rock in preparation for biomining)

Patent situation

• https://patents.google.com/patent/US20020027173A1/en "Apparatus and method for circular vortex air flow material grinding"
• http://patft.uspto.gov/netacgi/nph-Parser?Sect1=PTO1&Sect2=HITOFF&d=PALL&p=1&u=%2Fnetahtml%2FPTO%2Fsrchnum.htm&r=1&f=G&l=50&s1=6971594.PN.&OS=PN/6971594&RS=PN/6971594
• the technology is licensed to Greenshift. The inventor Frank Polifka died in 2012 and the original company appears to be defunct.

Links

• https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Windhexe
• http://peswiki.com/index.php/Directory:Tornado_in_a_Can
• http://www.keshding.com/imd210/assign4/history.html