Nanoparticle Mixing
Nanotechnology has worked its way into the field of processing. Nanoparticles are defined as units of substance that maintain that substance's properties that exist between 100 and 2500 nanometers. Particles smaller than this are considered "ultrafine," while particles that lose the original substance's properties would simply be considered another material altogether. While seeds of nanoparticle research date back a millennia, most of the great advancements have taken place within the last century. Scientists are especially intrigued by nanoparticles as a "missing link" between viewable materials and their atomic or even subatomic structures. The output of this research has made its way into the processing industry, with some of the benefits being felt immediately.
For example, in the medical industry, the processing of nanoparticles is allowing for the mass production of multiple drugs that once was deemed impossible or too difficult or time consuming to be deemed of any value. Breaking down materials to the nanoparticle level increases the overall surface area of a material for a given size (compared to if the material were intact) which makes it more soluble or dissolvable in water and other liquids. This allows manufactures to fit more substances into a given product or create new compounds at the nanoparticle level. This could be done before modern day nanoparticle research, but was a painstaking process that had to be done individually for each product. By increasing the efficiency for producing a given product, costs are made more manageable and we see the production of certain materials that simply was not feasible for previous manufacturers.
Nanoparticle processing is not without its challenges. The obvious issues lie with managing and developing materials that are, for the most part, invisible to the naked eye. But, for producers, one of the greatest challenges is posed with mixing nanoparticles for the product. Certain types of mixers can lead to contamination or an uneven mix. Ensuring a that the particles are mixed evenly is key for any type of manufactured product, but with nanoparticles, simply viewing the mixture after the fact will likely prove to be insufficient, so ensuring a proper mixture from the get go is key.
With this in mind, planetary mixers have proven to be very effective for the mixture of nanoparticles for industries that require their processing. Often used for creating pastes, planetary mixers have proven effective for mixing nanoparticles evenly across a variety of process sizes (up to 750 gallons in practice). Planetary mixers typically come in two varieties, single arm and double arm. These arms extend through the containment unit with smaller perpendicular arms extending out from the main arm. The overall effect is that virtually the entire product is subject to mixing at all times within the
Pages: 1 2 Social tagging: Mixing > Nanoparticle
