 Bepex® offers this approach of extrusion to producing granules when consistent pellet shape and particle strength are important. Extrusion is the process of pressing material through a die plate to form a cylindrical pellet. Low-pressure extrusion requires that the material be in a dough-like consistency at the die. The dough-like consistency can come from addition of a liquid or binder material, or from binder already present in the feed.
Bepex® has several sizes of low-pressure extruders available to meet a wide range of applications. In the extrusion system pictured at the right, a feeder meters the powder feed into a premixer. The premixer mixes the powder feeds with any liquid / binder feed that is needed. The mixed feed then drops into an extruder to be formed into pellets. The pellets break off at the die of the extruder and fall into a fluid bed dryer for drying and / or conditioning.
Low-pressure extruders form a medium density pellet that exhibits good solubility. The product's higher density (versus instant mixing agglomeration) can be useful in controlled release applications.
The Extrud-O-Mix® is a unique product line that eliminates typical boundaries between mixing/blending and agglomeration equipment. This efficient low pressure mixing and forming extruder can generate uniform, free flowing, dust free pellets or particles. The Extrud-O-Mix® is primarily designed for combining dry powders with liquid streams to produce a paste or dough suitable for extrusion. However, with efficient continuous mixing, adjustable shear input, and heat transfer available in the housing and the rotor the application list becomes very diverse.
Compacted products, including those extruded in high-pressure systems, generally have poor mechanical dispersion and/or dissolving rates. The Bepex International Extrud-O-Mix® uses the minimum force necessary to obtain a dust free particle with good particle integrity while maintaining excellent dispersibility.
One common application for the Extrud-O-Mix® is back mixing or simply forming wet cake products to improve drying efficiency. A more specialized approach is using the Extrud-O-Mix® as a product conditioner before spheronization and drying. The Extrud-O-Mix® is available in several arrangements and sizes from the lab scale Model EM-2 to high production units with 200 hp drives.
| TYPICAL APPLICATIONS OF EXTRUD-O-MIX® EXTRUDING SYSTEM |
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- Adhesives
- Animal feed
- Ascorbic acid
- Bakery mix
- Cookie icing
- Detergents
- Flavorings
- Food dye
- Fireplace logs
- Herbicides
- Insecticides
- Mannitol
- Natural gums
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- Pectin
- Polyacrylate gel
- Pharmaceuticals
- PVC additives
- Rubber accelerator
- Sludge
- Starch
- Sugar
- Sweeteners
- Yeast
- Zeolite
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System 1
In the extrusion system pictured above a slurry feed is metered to the Extrud-O-Mix®, along with the necessary amount of recycled dry product. The Extrud-O-Mix® acts as a backmixer to mix the slurry with the dry recycle material to form a product that is able to be dried in the Fluid Bed. The fines from the Fluid Bed exhaust, as well as fines from the post screening are recycled to the Extrud-O-Mix® feed. |
System 2
In the extrusion system pictured above a powder and a liquid are fed into the Extrud-O-Mix® for mixing and conditioning. The Extrud-O-Mix® product is then dropped into a Bexroller in semi-batch mode. The Bexroller rolls the pellets to form a spherical product. The spherical product is then discharged into a Fluid Bed dryer for drying and conditioning. Fines from the process are recycled back to the Extrud-O-Mix® feed. |
Downloads:
-  Bepex MS Series Compactors Brochure
- Bepex General Product Brochure |
