Cross-contamination

Cross-contamination is a key issue in industrial powder processing. Powder blenders play a key role in this. They are used to produce complex mixed products for the food, animal nutrition, food supplement and convenience sectors.

A recipe can comprise over 30 individual components. Liquid substances may also be included. These are fed into the mixer in precise doses and in a defined sequence. Since sensitive, agglomerated or dusty raw materials have to be mixed in at different times, multi-step processes are common. The mixing intensity, shear forces and mixing time vary depending on the ingredient. This results in agglomerates, coatings or homogeneous fine distributions. Fragile components are gently incorporated.

In highly automated powder factories, the entire logistics process – transport, storage, weighing, dosing and discharge – runs automatically. This requires the pipes, diverters and dosing devices to be emptied completely, as any product residue from a previous batch carries the risk of cross-contamination. This also applies to the powder mixer, which must be designed so that it can be emptied almost completely after the end of a batch.

amixon^® has developed special mixing tools for this purpose, which significantly improve the degree of emptying and ease of cleaning. Tools such as SinConvex^®, SinConcave^®, DomDisc^® or KoneSlid^® enable targeted flow control in the mixer. They promote a homogeneous mixing result and minimise residues.

Powder production that delivers batch-pure products without manual cleaning operations represents a high technical standard. Mixers from amixon^® can make a decisive contribution to this.