The Uses of a Liquid Mixer
Mixing is an essential step in many processes. It can help create stable emulsions, suspend or incorporate powders that tend to float and agglomerate, and mix liquids with varying viscosities.
Adding the right mixer to your process can reduce mixing times, boost productivity and help you meet production goals. Silverson offers several types of liquid mixers that can handle your application needs.
High Shear Mixing
A high shear mixer can perform a range of processes including homogenizing, dispersing, particle size reduction and reaction acceleration. These mixers are a great liquid mixer alternative to traditional agitation-type machines for mixing liquids with very different viscosities.
Homogenizing is best performed with a high shear mixer. This process creates a product with a uniform particle size that can only be achieved by forcing the liquid globules into a system that reduces their sizes through shearing, impact and cavitation.
These types of mixers are designed to operate at very high speeds which cause a vortex circulating through the gap between the rotor and stator. This creates very finely sized droplets that are continuously broken up before they can naturally separate from one another.
Creating emulsions is also possible with a high shear mixer. Oil-in-water and water-in-oil emulsions require very finely sized drops in order to maintain the stability of the mixture. The shear energy imparted by these types of mixers breaks up the droplets forming the emulsion, making the mixture much more stable.
Some of these mixers can be equipped with a vacuum system. This allows them to suck powdered ingredients right into the high shear rotor-stator assembly from their hopper. This is useful for working with materials that are difficult to process and resolves several issues that can arise when trying to wet out powders using agitation.
Continuous Liquid Mixing
Mixing processes that take place in a continuous manner allow for higher production rates than batch processing. Instead of taking the time to prepare and fill the mixer for each batch, these processes use automatic gravimetric feeding to add ingredients as they’re needed in real-time. This allows for a much more fluidized process and is often the preferred option for pharmaceutical applications (oral solid dosage), chemical and food industries, as well as large capacity mixing of plastics upstream of extrusion.
A rotary blender with an enclosed mixing chamber is used for continuous liquid-to-liquid or liquid-to-solid processing. This type of mixer is capable of mixing wettable powders, granules, emulsifiable concentrates, and high viscosity liquids up to one million centipoise. These types of mixers can be used in pressure tanks or in a variety of other vessels to ensure your product is mixed properly for your specific application.
The INDAG liquid mixer utilizes a rotor-stator system that’s capable of producing both high shear and low shear, depending on the application. This allows it to work with both powders and liquids, reducing agglomerates and ensuring the product is thoroughly dispersed. Additionally, these mixers are capable of mixing at a very rapid rate, with speeds up to 12,000 RPM. This helps to produce a high quality, agglomerate-free mixture in a short amount of time.
Liquid-to-Liquid Mixing
A liquid mixer can be used for industrial mixing of dissimilar fluids to produce a uniform blend. These can be liquids with varying viscosities, densities, solubility, behavior at different temperatures, and other factors. While this is often a relatively straightforward operation, it becomes much more challenging when the process involves the need to scale up to higher production rates. In these cases, increasing mixing cycle time or horsepower may be unavoidable.
Mixing of liquids is usually done by mechanically agitating the vessels. The vessel configuration and size is important. A mixer must be sized so that the shear produced will combine the liquids in an efficient manner and produce the desired operational outcome. This may be achieved by using a low-shear or high-shear mixer.
A typical high-shear mixer combines two liquids by creating a shearing force between the rotor and stator of the unit. This shear causes a vortex that pulls in the lighter liquid from the bottom of the tank and mixes it with the heavier liquid on top of the vessel.
Low-shear mixers use less power but must create the same shear in order to combine the two liquids in a tank. These types of mixers can be used to mix fluids with solid particles in suspension or to combine two liquids that are miscible.
Liquid-to-Solid Mixing
Mixing and blending solids require a very different approach than mixing liquids. Solids often have very distinct particle size distributions and density properties. They also tend to generate a lot of air and dust. These factors must be considered in the design and operation of mixing equipment for this application.
Liquid-to-solid mixing is commonly done to suspend coarse, free-flowing solids such as granulated sugar or flour in water, or it may be used to break up fine agglomerated solids such as rubber crumb or powdered milk. In either case, the Packaging Machinery Supplier mixing process must be able to lift these solids into suspension by the bulk motion of the fluid and, if necessary, use high shear forces to break up any lumps that may form.
Another application of solid-to-liquid mixing is the commingling of two liquids that are miscible on a molecular level, such as ethanol and water. This can be done using light to moderate agitation depending on the ingredients and process.
For all of your liquid to liquid and solid-to-liquid mixing needs, IKA has the mixers and agitation equipment that can help you achieve your processing objectives. Contact our Sales Team or Technical Staff to discuss your process and to determine the type of mixer you need. Our experts can recommend the best mixer to meet your application requirements including creating stable emulsions, blending liquids with varying viscosities and homogenizing.
