Short answers, pulled from the story.
Bulk material handling is an engineering field centered on designing equipment to move and store dry materials that are powdery, granular, or lumpy and stored in heaps. Examples include coal, grain, sand, cement, chemicals, and ores. It serves industries ranging from food and beverage to metals, ceramics, and paper.
Bulk material handling systems use conveyor belts, screw conveyors, tubular drag conveyors, bucket elevators, stackers, reclaimers, truck and railcar dumpers, wagon tipplers, shiploaders, hoppers, and diverters. Mobile equipment includes loaders and mobile hopper loaders and unloaders. Advanced systems integrate silos for storage with mechanical or pneumatic conveying and controlled discharge.
The major characteristics used by engineers are lump size, bulk density, moisture content, flowability, angle of repose, abrasiveness, and corrosivity. These properties determine the geometry of hoppers and stockpiles, the wear rate of equipment, and the type of conveying system required.
Bulk material handling is used across food, beverage, confectionery, pet food, animal feed, tobacco, chemical, agricultural, polymer, plastic, rubber, ceramic, electronics, metals, minerals, paint, paper, and textile industries. It is also essential at flour mills, coal-fired utility boilers, sawmills, paper mills, and ore concentrating and smelting plants.
A continuous ship unloader discharges bulk cargo from a ship's hold in an uninterrupted flow, without the stop-start cycle of a crane grab. Ports handling large quantities of bulk materials are replacing traditional gantry cranes with continuous ship unloaders for greater throughput.
Bulk material handling covers loose, dry materials stored in heaps, such as grain, coal, and sand. Non-bulk materials handling classifications include palletization and containerization, which deal with discrete packaged or unitized goods rather than flowing raw materials.