Batch Mixing

Batch Mixing Challenges

Conventional in-tank mixing is commonly used to disperse powders and immiscible liquids into other liquids. However, traditional in-tank mixing methods are hit or miss. Powders introduced into the vessel of liquid must find their way to the industrial batch mixers’ impellers to be effectively sheared and dispersed. While in theory, the impeller draws the powder down into the action zone, the reality is that only a portion of the introduced material reaches the tooling for effective in-tank processing.

The result? Use of traditional liquid agitators or high shear mixers in the batch mixing vessel can cause random, uncontrollable rates of shear, over-processing and incomplete dispersion.

Incomplete dispersion causes lumps and fish eyes, and results in waste as materials “raft” on the tank surface or build up on walls and baffles. Even low-shear jet mixing equipment, which eliminates hard-to-clean tank baffles and reduces air entrainment, does not solve all the problems inherent to in-tank batch mixing.

The facts are inescapable: Conventional batch mixing technology is simply inadequate to the task.

What is Inline Processing?

Instead of adding the material to be mixed directly into a batch mixing process vessel, the powder phase is added into the liquid phase at some point in the piping. Single-pass powder addition can occur in a pipeline between two vessels, in the water supply line leading to a batch tank or at some point in the pipeline that is part of a continuous batch mixing process.

As an alternative to single-pass addition, the powder can be introduced into a recycle or recirculation loop that includes a tank.