Chemical industry manufacturers use horizontal and vertical media mills with grinding media to deagglomerate and reduce the particle size of their key materials in products like auto paints and coatings, agrochemicals, packaging inks and many more. The media is usually round and can be made of ceramic, stainless steel, polyurethane, silicon carbide and a host of other materials.
During milling, the media is agitated then product is pumped through the bead field where collisions between media and mill parts break them down until the desired particle size distribution is reached. This is, by design, a highly abrasive environment where both the media and the mill components are worn down while producing results. These components can represent a massive amount of a manufacturer's maintenance cost, regardless, it is a necessary and vital part of the process.
But even before this grinding step happens, a very important high shear dispersion step occurs, essentially to create a pre-mix. Getting the dispersion to a high-quality level before the media mill is key, because it can greatly improve or in some cases even eliminate the grinding process. This is due to the mill receiving a more homogeneous and uniform product, increasing the availability of key wetting agents during the crucial first pass through the media field, where a staggering amount of new surface area is created. Without this, the rapid expansion of new surface area can create higher viscosities blinding screens, causing hydraulic packing, increasing heat generation, and generally wreaking havoc on the milling process.
Admix high shear mixers (like the Rotosolver® CX) have helped chemical industry customers get a higher quality dispersion and:
- narrow particle size distribution
- enable using smaller grinding media
- Key for submicron and nano dispersion
- incur less wear on media and mill
- reduce risk of screen blinding
- achieve higher flow rates and productivity
- reduce need for recirculation
- development pigment faster
- wet out and disperse powders faster
- eliminate agglomerates
- reduce batch times by 50-80%
- reduce mill maintenance costs up to 90%
Contact us to review your processes and find out what you too, can achieve with Admix high shear equipment.