Key Factors Influencing the Design of Industrial Fluid Mixers
Although it may sound a bit dramatic, it is hard to imagine a world without industrial fluid mixers. If you look around your home, garage or place of work, chances are you will find some item that passed through a fluid mixer during its production or manufacturing process. For example, these mixers are required to process many food items, produce life-saving pharmaceutical medications, treat water and eliminate waste. In addition, industrial fluid mixers are vital to a number of other industries, such as chemical processing, oil refining, and paint production. So that can of chicken noodle soup, container of multi-vitamins, and gallon of customized paint are all available at your local retail store thanks to this technology.
Given this wide range of applications, it is not surprising that an entire industry has grown up around the design, development and manufacturing of custom agitation equipment. In this field, designers and engineers are devoted to finding the best solutions for an almost endless number of manufacturing scenarios. Basically, whenever raw liquid ingredients need to be mixed, blended, emulsified, homogenized or otherwise combined on a large scale, an industrial fluid mixer is needed to make it happen. A combination of theoretical design concepts and real-life test runs are key steps to finding mixing solutions that work.
With respect to industrial fluid mixers, there are three basic types of raw material combinations that apply: liquids-to-liquids, liquids-to-powders, and liquids-to-gases. Liquid-to-liquid combinations generally refer to mixtures without solid components; whereas liquid-to-powder formulations include some form of particulate matter. For example, a liquid-to-powder mixture would include the addition of flour to the wet ingredients needed to produce pastry dough in a food processing plant. Liquid-to-gas combinations are fairly self-explanatory, with the introduction of nitrogen gas to the wine production process being a good example. Each of these types of raw material combinations presents its own unique challenges in terms of achieving the desired final product outcome.
Without question, there are a vast number of raw material combinations possible. Therefore, designers and agitation equipment engineers need to delve into each individual situation to come up with the best possible solutions. There is truly no one-size-fits-all approach when it comes to this process. A few factors which determine the final design include the weight and amount of each raw material being used, environmental considerations surrounding where the production takes place, and the consistency of the desired final product.
In addition, designers and engineers who work on industrial fluid mixers should also keep optimal operating efficiency in mind. This includes identifying and reducing “wasted” energy and finding ways to minimize the use of human capital and raw ingredients during the production process. Developing systems able to process larger batches in less time is one way this is accomplished. Fewer batches means less manual labor is needed to set up the process and leads to increased yield in terms of final product output. In turn, these improvements lead to greater cost savings and a more robust bottom line for the manufacturer.
