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Frequently Asked Questions
A Ploughshare Mixer is often suitable for materials that tend to agglomerate.
Its plough-shaped mixing tools generate intensive circulation of the material, while optional high-speed choppers can break up lumps and agglomerates during mixing.
The final selection should be based on the material characteristics and process requirements.
Vortex mixers are designed for a wide variety of powders, granules, and powder-liquid mixtures.
Typical applications include chemical powders, food ingredients, pharmaceutical powders, animal feed, dry mortar, ceramics, battery materials, fertilizers, pesticides, minerals, refractory materials, and other bulk solids. The actual mixer configuration should be selected according to the physical and chemical properties of the material.
Vortex manufacture a wide range of industrial powder and bulk solids mixing equipment, including:
- Horizontal Ribbon Mixers
- Ploughshare Mixers
- Double Shaft Paddle Mixers (Paddle Mixers / “No-Gravity” Mixers)
- Conical Twin-Screw Mixers
- Vertical Screw Ribbon Mixers
- Double Cone Mixers
- V-Type Mixers
- 3D Motion Mixers
- Customized mixing systems and complete mixing lines
The most suitable mixer depends on your materials, production capacity, mixing ratio, required mixing time, and process conditions.
Mixer capacity should be evaluated using both the total vessel volume and the effective working volume. The required volume depends on material bulk density, batch weight, filling ratio and the mixing principle of the selected machine. A mixer should not normally be filled to its total geometric volume because sufficient space is required for material movement and effective mixing. For this reason, selecting a mixer based only on vessel volume can result in an unsuitable configuration.
The appropriate industrial powder mixer depends on several factors, including:
- Material characteristics
- Bulk density
- Particle size
- Required mixing uniformity
- Batch size or production capacity
- Moisture content
- Whether heating or drying is required
- Whether liquid addition is required
- Required discharge configuration
- Production and automation requirements
Vortex provides different powder mixer designs so that equipment can be selected according to the specific process requirements.
Vortex powder mixer selection depends on several factors, including:
- Material type and characteristics
- Bulk density and particle size
- Material flowability
- Moisture content
- Viscosity
- Mixing ratio
- Batch size or required production capacity
- Whether liquid addition is required
- Required mixing uniformity
- Temperature, pressure, vacuum, or other process requirements
Vortex engineers can recommend a suitable powder mixer based on your material and process requirements.
Yes, We can supply simple stand alone panels or automated PLC controlled systems. We normally install and test all controls on our mixers before they are shipped.
Yes, we normally test the mixers before they are shipped and mark out the wire need to connect on the control box.
We manufacture specialty mixing equipment for powder & bulk materials. Included are ribbon blender, plough mixer, conical screw mixer, twin shaft paddle mixer, V blender, double cone blender and other auxiliary equipment such as screw conveyor, quantitive auger filler.
We sell across the world, our cusotmers distribute 5 continents.
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Can one mixer handle both dry materials and pastes?
Q: Most of the processes in my specialty chemical company are batch and handle only dry materials. However, some materials go through a paste phase. Can one mixer handle both dry materials and pastes?
A: Yes, but your company will have to invest more capital in the more sophisticated mixer required, when for most of your processing a less sophisticated mixer (for instance, a tumble blender also called double cone mixer, which handles only dry solids and is simply constructed and thus less expensive) is all you need. If you need to handle both dry and paste phases, you can select a ribbon mixer(vertical ribbon mixer or horizontal ribbon mixer), which can handle dry materials and, usually, pastes; however, this impeller-driven ribbon mixer is more expensive than a tumble blender(double cone mixer). If your paste is very difficult to handle, you can select a multiple-motion mixer (paddle blender or plow mixer) with impellers that rotate with planetary motion or intermeshing sigma blades, but this is even more expensive.
To determine which mixer is suited to handling your paste without being overly sophisticated or expensive, have the paste tested. Paste – a material partway between a dry material and a liquid – can mean different things to different people and can’t be as easily characterized as a dry material. To double check that the equipment will work with your dry material as well as your paste, especially if you select a multiple-motion mixer(double shaft paddle blender or plow mixer), have a small sample of the dry material tested. This will determine, for instance, whether the multiple-motion mixer’s higher shear rate will degrade the dry material during your simpler mixing processes. Vortex Mixing Technology Co., Limited can test a small sample of your material in various mixers with different impeller arrangements, depending on your material‘s characteristics. Vortex Mixing Technology Co., Limited performs such tests at no charge.
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