Top 4 Types of Powder Mixers

What is a Powder Mixer?

Combining dry ingredients is one of the oldest unit operations in the processing industries. Over the years, many different types of equipment have been developed to homogenize dry materials, including powders. Let&#;s look first at some common definitions used in describing powder mixers.

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As the name suggests, powder mixers are various types of sanitary mixers used to either:

1. Combine two flowable dry materials
2. Mix a powder into a liquid

While the focus of this article will be primarily on mixing powders into liquids, there are mixing technologies which are common to both applications.

Commonly used in the dairy, food, and beverage industries, powder mixers may be either batch-type or continuous feed. And, they rely on two different mixing technologies, depending on the physical properties of the powder being mixed.

In the case of powders which are relatively incohesive&#;that is, without particles that easily stick together&#;a convective mixing process, such as that found in the ribbon mixer described below, may be used to thoroughly combine the dry ingredients.

When materials are cohesive, though&#;prone to sticking together, as is the case with fine powders, and also with wet materials&#;then a more intensive mixing process is required using either impact force or shear force to thoroughly combine ingredients. The high shear mixers and liquifiers described in later sections of this article are examples of these intensive-type mixers.

Key issues in powder mixing

There are a couple of operating parameters that impact the productivity of powder mixing. As a general rule, sanitary processing plant operators will seek to achieve as short a mixing time as possible to increase their line productivity. The greater the volume of the powder to be mixed, the longer the time required to blend them together. However, doubling the volume does not necessarily mean doubling the mixing time.

Higher mixing speeds will generally result in shorter mixing times. However, it is essential to note that using excessive mixing speeds with some powders can result in particle breakage and affect product consistency, so processors must consider this factor when mixing.

1. The Best Mixer is...

There is quite a large variety of technology and design for bulk solids / powder mixing. Thus defining a BEST type of mixer can only be done relatively to the application. One mixer design can be perfectly adapted to a given situation but will not perform well in another application in terms of mixing time and / or homogeneity achieved.

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This page is a selection guide for powder mixers aiming at helping the reader define the best design for his particular application. It reviews different mixing purposes commonly found in industry according to the throughput required, the type of mixing to perform, the kind and proportion of ingredients to mix...etc...

2. Choice criteria

How to chose well your powder dry mixing equipment ?

2.1 Capacity

2.1.1 Small scale operations

Not all industries are huge ! It is sometimes necessary to have a rather manual but yet very flexible process in order to perform some contract manufacturing, produce personalized batches or even to produce a preblend within the factory  that will then be used by a bigger line.

For this type of process, mixers such as...

... are usually a good choice. Their

2.1.2 Large scale operations

... are usually a good choice. Their size is flexible, they can stand-alone inside a production area and provide reasonably good mixing performance for free flowing powders . For the simpler design, the absence of agitator makes their cleaning easy and will therefore facilitate changeovers which are usually very frequent in small, flexible manufacturing lines.

For high capacity lines, the mixer has to be integrated inside a fully automated system allowing to reduce the batching time or even consider a continuous mixing process. The mixing time must be short to ensure a high capacity, therefore such mixers cannot rely only on diffusive mechanisms like drum or bin blenders, but must have agitation tools to provide convective and, to different levels, shear mixing.

For this type of process, consider mixers such as...

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