At home, our kitchen appliances provide a lot of shear, and you can quickly puree fruits and vegetables. On an industrial level it can be challenging to match this exact environment in an efficient way. Scaling up this type of process exactly would require huge amounts of horsepower.
For example, think about when you use a handheld emersion blender in your kitchen to make a soup. The blades of the blender provide a tremendous amount of shear and this makes short work of the chunky vegetables. However, you must move the emersion blender around in the saucepan to make sure you get everything to the same consistency. In a manufacturing environment, we don’t have the capability of moving the mixer around in the product. So, we need to bring the product to the mixer. This is where inline mixers come in handy. Pumping product through an inline shear device ensures every drop of product receives the same amount of shear.
Admix was recently approached by a customer with this exact challenge. They were making soups and salad dressings in a tank that had a high shear mixer. The mixer provided a lot of chopping action but not much flow. The tank was 200 gallons, and it was taking a long time to break the product down to the desired level due to the low turnover in the tank. In addition, the finished product was often inconsistent, frequently larger chunks were found in the final product.
Admix was able to provide a solution. Utilizing our equipment trial program, the customer was able to prove the concept out in their own facility, with our Dynashear® high shear emulsifier. They significantly reduced batch times and eliminated product quality inconsistencies. This customer used their existing in-tank high shear mixer to get the product to 75% of where it needed to be before sending it through our 5HP Dynashear. This is an extremely easy solution to implement, and it is cost, time, and energy efficient!