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MIXING, WEIGHING & CONVEYING
WHAT IS HIGH SHEAR MIXING AND HOW DOES IT BENEFIT MANUFACTURERS?
With a commitment to innovation, reliability, and customer satisfaction, Silverson Machines are dedicated to providing customers with the optimal mixing solution for their specific needs
ilverson Machines offers an unparalleled range of high shear mixers from laboratory to production-scale. But why might manufacturers choose high shear mixers, over traditional mixing equipment such as stirrers and agitators? Agitators can give satisfactory results for simple duties such as blending like-viscosity liquids, providing in- tank uniformity and promoting heat transfer in jacketed vessels. But if you need to blend liquids of differing viscosities, emulsify, homogenise, disintegrate, solubilise, disperse powders, reduce particle size or accelerate reactions, these tasks cannot readily be achieved with a low shear device. Whereas, a Silverson High Shear mixer can do this and more, cutting your mixing time by up to 90%. How are high shear mixers able to achieve these results?
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High shear mixing involves intense mechanical agitation and shearing forces to achieve superior blending, dispersion, and particle size reduction. Unlike conventional mixers or agitators, high shear mixers utilise specialised rotor/stator technology to generate extremely high shear rates, creating a powerful suction effect that continuously draws materials into the high shear zone. This mixing efficiency enables: • Faster processing times and increased production throughput.
• Finer and more uniform droplet/particle size distributions.
• Improved product quality, consistency, and stability across batches.
Silverson Machines has helped thousands of customers improve their mixing processes and product quality. To demonstrate how high shear mixing has benefitted manufacturers across a range of industries, Silverson has launched a collection of case studies on its website. In this library, examples can be found of real instances where the use of high shear mixers has helped customers reduce mixing and process times, increase yield of raw materials, save money and improve their manufacturing processes. Below is a short summary of some of the case studies. Hydrating gums & thickening agents Silverson helped a food manufacturer revitalise their mixing process after it became too expensive to sustain due to the high percentage of pectin in their formulation. Since switching from an agitator to a Silverson powder/liquid mixer the amount of pectin in their formulation has been reduced by 20%. Before contacting Silverson, the company had been using a conventional agitator to mix pectin into a base liquid. However, using the agitator even after over 40 minutes of mixing, the product needed to be put through a filtration stage to remove agglomerated lumps of un-hydrated pectin. The agitator was so inefficient at dispersing the powder that the operators were adding up to 20% more pectin than was needed to account for what was being lost.
A trial was arranged to see what results could be obtained using a Silverson powder/liquid mixer. With this system, the powder and liquid are introduced straight into the high shear zone of the mixer and subjected to intense mechanical and hydraulic shear in the rotor/stator workhead. This fully disperses and rapidly hydrates the powder, achieving full yield of thickening effect.
This allowed the company to incorporate 5% pectin
10 MAY 2024 | PROCESS & CONTROL
The FMX25, and a Pilot Disintegrator Plant (below)
quickly and effectively to achieve their desired results. This meant a 20% reduction in pectin compared to their previous process. The cost implications of this were huge, so much so that the mixer would pay for itself many times over with the savings made on the raw material. In this case, achieving the full yield of the pectin was only possible once high shear was introduced into the process. Compared to the agitator, the Silverson mixer produced a higher quality product with greater consistency between batches, whilst saving money. Reclamation of waste product Silverson has helped another food manufacturer save £2.5 million pounds by using high shear mixers to reclaim wastage created by their 24 hours a day production line. The company's quality control system rejects any product that doesn't meet specification, and this was resulting in 2 tonnes of waste product per day.
To try to reduce the amount of waste produced, Silverson’s team of mixing experts recommended reprocessing the rejected material to form a percentage of the ingredients for new products. By reducing the rejected food down into a slurry, 10–15% of the formulation of each new batch can be made up of reclaimed material. Not only does this result in less waste, it also produces a higher quality product.
Trials were performed using a Pilot Disintegrator plant, first the waste product was incorporated into 100 litres of water to see if a usable slurry could be produced. The Bottom Entry mixer provided the initial disintegration before the mixture was passed through the In- Line mixer to refine the slurry, resulting in a smooth, agglomerate-free slurry with the whole process taking less than 15 minutes.
Silverson Machines
sales@silverson.co.uk www.silverson.co.uk
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