Powder mixers are used in a wide variety of industries, because powders are relevant for the manufacture of countless products: Food, animal feed, cosmetics, tablets, plastics, paints, powder coatings, minerals, metals, rubber, PVC, detergents, cement, plaster and many more.
A powder mixer blends dry and wet powders, as well as granules, flakes and dusts. Powders have different physical properties and are more or less sensitive during processing. Too much heat during mixing or too intensive mixing can impair the quality or lead to particle breakage and dust formation.
A good powder mixer mixes even sensitive and fragile particles without any adverse effects. Due to the large number of different powders, a powder mixer should be able to be configured individually for each powder. Different tools and additional options such as liquid injection or gassing are important in order to be able to process each powder mixture optimally.
Depending on powder type, batch size, throughput, manufacturing process, etc., different powder mixers are used:
- vertical powder mixers
- horizontal powder mixers
- continuous powder mixers
- discontinuous powder mixers
- single-shaft mixers
- Paddle mixers
- Inline mixers
- Batch mixers
- etc.
Powder mixers are usually differentiated by the shape of the mixing vessel into v-shaped mixers or conical mixers and cylindrical mixers.
For the laboratory or product development, powder mixers are suitable as laboratory mixers, with which small quantities up to about 12 liters can be mixed. For larger batches and throughputs of up to 100,000 liters per hour, powder mixers are available in many different size gradations up to mixing plants as high as houses.
Powder mixers are very common, for example, in the manufacture of pharmaceutical products such as tablets, capsules and pills. In this process, a powder batch is mixed from the basic substances of active ingredient, filler and other additives by means of powder mixers for further processing, in order to subsequently process these into the end product on capsule filling machines or tablet presses.
In the manufacture of pharmaceutical products, powder mixers are often used for mixing after drying of the powder or active ingredient.