Grinding
In the realm of particle technologies, size reduction of solids plays a crucial role in transforming raw materials into refined products with improved properties.
This process involves reducing the size of solid materials to enhance their functionality, facilitate handling, and enable further processing. Among the various techniques used for size reduction, grinding stands as a cornerstone, offering unparalleled precision and versatility.
Understanding Size Reduction
Size reduction is the process of reducing the dimensions of solid materials, resulting in smaller particles or pieces. It encompasses a wide range of operations, including grinding, crushing, milling, cutting, shredding, and more. By breaking down solids into smaller sizes, size reduction facilitates better material handling, increases surface area for efficient reactions, improves uniformity, and enables the extraction of valuable components.
The Role of Grinding in Size Reduction
Grinding, one of the primary methods of size reduction, involves the application of mechanical forces to break down materials into smaller particles. This process utilizes grinding media, such as balls, rods, or abrasive grains, to physically impact, compress, or shear the solid material, resulting in size reduction. The Kreber grinder offers options to break up using mechanical force or knives to reduce the size of the products into a set size and shape.
Smaller particles are easier to handle and move around. Grinding makes materials more manageable for transportation and mixing.
Grinding increases the surface area of materials, allowing for faster and more efficient reactions, like chemical reactions or dissolution.
Grinding helps achieve a more uniform particle size distribution, ensuring consistency in the final product.
Grinding can help extract valuable components from solid materials, like minerals from ore or precious metals.
Grinding works with a wide range of materials and allows precise control over the final size, shape, and distribution of particles.
Grinding is a cost-effective method compared to other techniques. It requires less energy and equipment, making it economically viable. By using grinding to reduce the size of materials, we can create refined products with improved properties in various industries such as mining&minerals, food, pharma, chemical & recycling processes.
One of the ways to define yield is by the fraction of the solute in the feed that is ending up in the final product. The fraction of solute in the feed that remains in the solution can then be considered as the loss.
The crystal structure, size, shape and purity can be used to express the particle product quality of a crystalline product. Customer and manufacturer specification for a crystalline product can usually be related to these four product quality aspects.
The crystal structure for instance impacts properties such as solubility, shelf life and bioavailability of a pharmaceutical compound. A crystal size distribution gives information on the collection of crystal sizes in the product, which is for instance an important parameter in determining the dissolution behavior of fertilizers and pharmaceuticals.
The crystal shape can be vital for flow and storage properties of a product. In the food, pharmaceutical and fine chemical industries high levels of purity are desired. For instance, impurities from side reactions during the synthesis of an active pharmaceutical ingredient could lead to unwanted additional biological activity of the administered drug if they end up in the final product.
Analytical techniques can be employed to measure and control particle product aspects throughout the manufacturing process.
Process parameters have a strong impact on the particle product quality. By understanding the relationship between process parameters and particle characteristics, manufacturers can optimize their processes to consistently produce high-quality particle products.
A higher supersaturation during a crystallization process might for instance lead to a larger nucleation rate and therefore more particles and a product with a smaller average size. However, a higher supersaturation speeds up crystallization, increasing productivity.
MicroPrilling Units
The Kreber MicroPriller is an all-in-one solution for transforming molten materials into solid powders with enhanced functional characteristics, including increased solubility or encapsulation of active ingredients.
Operating from a melt-in to powder-out battery limit, the Kreber MicroPrillers handle all necessary processes within the equipment itself, such as cooling, emission treatment, and reintroduction of the cooling medium (e.g., air, nitrogen, or other gases). This closed-loop configuration ensures near-zero emissions to the environment. Our MicroPrilling equipment is designed to be flexible, low-maintenance, and scalable, supporting capacities of up to 15 tons per hour.
Full Package Overview
An overview of our full package for a Spray congealing unit
Atomizer
The atomizer nozzle breaks up the melt or slurry in small pre-defined droplets.
Cooling chamber
Inside the cooling chamber the droplets are contacted with a co-current gas cooling stream, allowing for rapid solidification.
Powder collection
The product is caught in a product cyclone, allowing for easy collection of the powder.
Bag filter
A bag filtering section is used to clean up any remaining particles from the air stream.
Heat exchanger
Just prior to re-introduction in the spray chamber, the cooling medium is cooled back to its operational temperature, allowing for closed loop operation.
Special options
Special options include ATEX equipment, encapsulation options, different cooling media.
Particle Technologies
Particle technologies are process technologies that produce, use, or separate particles.
For example, pharmaceutical industry produces precise drug formulations based on particle technologies. Activated carbon particles are commonly used in the food industry as an adsorbent to remove impurities, off-flavours, and odours from liquids such as water, beverages, and food ingredients. Chemical industries may use particles as adsorbents to remove certain components in separation processes. One example of separating particles in the chemical industry is the use of cyclones, which employ centrifugal force to separate solid particles from gas or liquid streams based on their particle size and density.
Particle Technologies
The technologies that produce particles can be divided into solidification, crystallization, and particle modification processes.
Solidification
We can define solidification as a widely applied process that shapes a melt into a specific form. For instance, a fertilizer melt is...
Soldification
We can define solidification as a widely applied process that shapes a melt into a specific form. For instance, a fertilizer melt is prilled into spherical fertilizer particles to conveniently distribute over the land to grow crops. Another example is the casting of iron into plates or sheets, which are used in construction, automotive body panels, and industrial process equipment. Solidification also includes processes that lead to the formation of amorphous or highly viscous particles which have a non-crystalline structure. Polymer solidification, for instance, involves the cooling or curing of a polymer melt to decrease the viscosity and convert it into a particulate product or a specific shape that is (for a large part) non-crystalline. For solidification processes the emphasis is on the physical characteristics of the shaped product and less on the specific arrangement of atoms or molecules within the solid.
Crystallization
Crystallization is a particle technology that involves the formation of solid particles with a well-defined crystal structure from...
Crystallization
Crystallization is a particle technology that involves the formation of solid particles with a well-defined crystal structure from a solution or melt. It is a widely used technique in various industries, including pharmaceuticals, chemicals, and materials science for purification and separation.
Crystallization selectively forms and grows crystalline particles. By carefully controlling the crystallization conditions, highly pure crystals with specific properties can be obtained from a single crystallization process step. Crystallization is specifically employed to separate or purify substances into a particulate product. The product from a chemical synthesis can for instance be purified by crystallization.
Particle Modification
Particle technologies can further be used to intentionally modify particles and their properties. During such a process, particles in the feed...
Particle Modification
Particle technologies can further be used to intentionally modify particles and their properties. During such a process, particles in the feed are transformed to particles with the desired particle properties or functionalities. For instance, milling and grinding processes are employed to reduce the particle size of particulate materials. These techniques involve mechanical forces that break down larger particles into smaller ones. Granulation refers to the process of agglomerating fine particles into larger granules. It is commonly used in chemical industry, where small particles are combined and bound together using binders or additives into larger particles to improve flowability or compressibility.
Another example of particle modification is encapsulation or coating. During the process a thin layer of material is applied onto the surface of particles. This can be done through methods like spray drying, fluidized bed coating, or chemical vapor deposition. Coatings can provide functionalities such as controlled release, improved stability, enhanced compatibility, or modified surface properties of the particles.
Particle Use
Particles can be used in processes to efficiently achieve purified and reaction products. For instance, adsorbent particles...
Particle Use
Particles can be used in processes to efficiently achieve purified and reaction products. For instance, adsorbent particles such as activated carbon, zeolites, and silica gel remove or recover specific substances from gases or liquids. The adsorbent particles possess a high surface area, allowing for increased adsorption capacity. Adsorbent particles can be used in a wide range of processes such as gas purification, water treatment, air pollution control, and adsorption chromatography.
Particles serve as catalysts to accelerate chemical reactions by providing an active surface which reagents quickly react to the preferred reaction product. Catalyst particles play a crucial role in numerous industrial processes, including petroleum refining, chemical synthesis, environmental remediation, and emission control.
Particle Separation
Mechanical separations involve the use of physical mechanisms to separate particles based on their size, density...
Particle Separation
Mechanical separations involve the use of physical mechanisms to separate particles based on their size, density, or other physical properties.
For instance filtration is a process that separates solid particles from a fluid (liquid or gas) by passing the mixture through a porous medium, called a filter. The filter retains the solid particles while allowing the fluid to pass through. The choice of filter medium depends on the particle size, desired filtration efficiency, and compatibility with the fluid and particles involved.
Sieving involves the passing of a mixture of particles through a sieve or screen with specific openings or mesh sizes. The smaller particles pass through the sieve, while the larger particles are retained.
Centrifugal forces are used in cyclone separators to separate particles from a gas or liquid stream based on particle size and density. The mixture enters a cylindrical chamber tangentially, creating a swirling motion. Due to the centrifugal force, the heavier particles move toward the outer wall and are collected, while the lighter particles and the gas or liquid continue to the outlet.
Spray Congealing
Spray congealing is an efficient process utilized in the manufacturing industry for the production of solid powders. This innovative technique involves atomization, rapid cooling, and solidification to create uniform and high-quality solid materials.
Atomization
The spray congealing process begins with the precise atomization of the liquid material. The liquid is heated to a specific temperature and then transformed into fine droplets using a high-pressure nozzle system. This atomization stage ensures that the liquid is converted into small, uniformly-sized droplets, setting the foundation for consistent particle formation.
Rapid Cooling and Solidification
The atomized droplets are introduced into a controlled environment, typically a temperature-controlled chamber. Within this chamber, the droplets come into contact with a cold gas stream or a cooling medium. The sudden exposure to the cool environment leads to rapid cooling and solidification of the droplets, transforming them into solid particles. The resulting particles exhibit spherical shapes, and uniform sizes.
Spray congealing enables the production of spherical particles with precise and uniform sizes. This uniformity enhances product quality and performance, making spray congealing ideal for applications where consistency is critical.
Our equipment is easy to operate, due to our well defined process operating parameters. Furthermore, the low amount of rotating and intricate parts result in a reliable process, giving the client an overall low operational and maintenance cost.
The process is particularly advantageous for encapsulating sensitive or volatile substances. By solidifying the liquid droplets quickly, spray congealing can protect and preserve the integrity of sensitive components during the manufacturing process.
Spray congealing allows for the incorporation of multiple ingredients into compounded particles, facilitating the creation of composite materials with tailored properties. This flexibility enables the development of advanced materials with enhanced functionalities.
Thanks to a constant stream of technical innovations, such as state-of-the-art air inlet filtration and closed loop operation, emissions can be cut to virtually non existing.
