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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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Ploughshare Mixer in Special Applications of Stearic Acid
Stearic acid as agents for food and chemical industry, more and more complicated process mixing machine is needed in order to meet customer’s product requirement. We would like to share the process of stearic acid mixing as following: after filling raw material into mixer, the vessel will be heated by heating jacket up to 110 degree temperature. Then, there will be reaction inside mixer body and pressure will be happen in it. The pressure inside body will be around 2-3 barg. Steam and other chemical reaction result this pressure and we need vacuum pump to extract steam out from mixer body through vacuum drum. After reaction, the product inside mixer need to be cooled by cooling jacket and then discharge final product through valve. So, which type mixer is suitable for above application? How to design the mixer to meet above process? Vortex has know-how to share our experience:
A. Which type mixer is suitable for above application?
According to our experience, ploughshare mixer is the best choice for stearic acid application because of following features:
- High speed mixing of reactants
- Prevention of overconcentration
- No temperature gradients in the reaction field
- Multiphase process (reaction, heating, drying, granulation, cooling)
It has a cylindrical shell with plough shovel welded or bolted on arms and the shaft runs at high speed to effect a fluidizing action. The plough shovel lifts the material upward, and the material settles in a pattern. Whirling, three-dimensional product movement makes output material with very high homogeneity within short mixing time.
B. How to design the mixer to meet above process?
1. Seal Part: Considering pressure inside mixer body, the seal part of main shaft and chopper is very important. As for chopper, double action mechanical seal is necessary to avoid leakage. As for main shaft seal, if pressure below 1 barg, packing seal can be used but if pressure is big, we must use double action mechanical seal.
2. Discharge: Due to the process material will become from liquid paste to powder, ordinary discharge valve is not good. So, we design segment ball valve for discharge in order to avoid liquid leakage and easy discharge.
3. Drive Power: According to process, it is low speed at first during reaction and fast speed at last when material becomes powder. So, the drive unit must be strong enough and safety factor should be beyond 1.3. Due to hydraulic motor is complicated, we think about to use another way to instead it. Firstly, we design fluid coupling between drive unit in order to keep stable torque when slow speed start. Furthermore, we use double speed motor to have strong power when slow start.
4. Plough Shovel: Considering full and complete reaction inside mixer and material feature, we design asymmetric plough shovel in order to make material easy flow.
Anyway, different application has different design feature. So, if you have any inquiry about this kind of mixer, please feel free to contact us.
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