The Importance Of Mixer Testing And Selection

By Christine Banaszek

By Christine Banaszek, Application Engineer

If you haven’t tested a variety of mixers during the last few years, forget all the rules you used to rely on to distinguish one mixer from another. According to the old rulebook, mixers fell into neat categories according to their capabilities and the requirements of your application. Once you identified the viscosity of your materials, for example, the shear required and the target particle or droplet size, you could quickly narrow your equipment choices to one or two likely candidates. Well, those days are over. During the recent past, profound advances in design and engineering have made mixers in most categories ("categories" such as rotor/stator High Shear Mixers, Double Planetary Mixers, and Multi-shaft Mixer hybrids) far more versatile than they were before.