Industrial Mixers: How To Choose Between Horizontal Or Vertical Mixing?

Both of the mixers are generally used to mix dry powders and most often end users are confused as to which mixer would be suitable for them?

Ribbon Mixer is a horizontal mixer that is used to mix the dry powders gently. Ribbon Mixers consists of inner and outer ribbons, where the outer ribbon continuously lifts the material and passes it to inner ribbons where they are traversed axially.

Conical Screw Mixer is a vertical mixer that is used to mix the dry powders even more gently as compared to the ribbon mixer. Here the materials are mixed with the help of the self-rotation screw which lifts the material from the bottom of the cone to the top and then the materials fall down by gravity.

Here are some of the factors one should consider before choosing between Ribbon Mixers and Vertical Conical Screw Mixers:

Area Available: A Ribbon Mixer occupies more footprint area as compared to the Vertical Conical Screw Mixer but headspace required for the same is higher.

Cost: Capital cost of Vertical Cone Screw Blender is higher as compared to that of the Ribbon blender. But, the power cost required to run the ribbon blender is greater than required for Vertical Cone Screw blender.

Discharge: Ideally speaking Vertical Cone Screw blender can give 100% of the discharge as compared to some of the leftovers in the Ribbon blender.

Contamination: Ribbon blender has a higher chance of contamination due to the presence of packing gland in the product zone. So, if contamination is affecting the product adversely and product quality is of great importance than one can shift to the Vertical Cone Screw blender.

Operation: If one needs to operate with the batches only occupying 20-30% of mixer volume then one can opt for Vertical Cone Screw blender. Cause unlike Ribbon blender, they don’t have a requirement of minimum volume.

Gentle mixing: For the friable material, the Vertical Screw Cone blender offers gentler mixing as compared to the Ribbon blender.

Cleaning: While mixing reactive materials in batches, cleaning becomes essential. Vertical Cone Screw Mixer provides easier and complete clean up as opposed to Ribbon blender where there are chances of product leftover.

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