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Spray drying is a method of producing a dry powder from a liquid or slurry by rapidly drying with a hot gas. This is the preferred method of drying of many thermally-sensitive materials such as foods and pharmaceuticals. A consistent particle size distribution is a reason for spray drying some industrial products such as catalysts. Air is the heated drying medium; however, if the liquid is a flammable solvent such as ethanol or the product is oxygen-sensitive then nitrogen is used.
Mortar and pestle are implements used since ancient times to prepare ingredients or substances by crushing and grinding them into a fine paste or powder in the kitchen, medicine and pharmacy. The mortar is a bowl, typically made of hard wood, metal, ceramic, or hard stone, such as granite. The pestle is a heavy and blunt club-shaped object. The substance to be ground, which may be wet or dry, is placed in the mortar, where the pestle is pressed and rotated onto it until the desired texture is achieved.
Powder metallurgy (PM) is a term covering a wide range of ways in which materials or components are made from metal powders. PM processes can avoid, or greatly reduce, the need to use metal removal processes, thereby drastically reducing yield losses in manufacture and often resulting in lower costs.
Selective laser sintering (SLS) is an additive manufacturing (AM) technique that uses a laser as the power source to sinter powdered material, aiming the laser automatically at points in space defined by a 3D model, binding the material together to create a solid structure. It is similar to Selective Laser Melting (SLM); the two are instantiations of the same concept but differ in technical details. Selective laser melting (SLM) uses a comparable concept, but in SLM the material is fully melted rather than sintered, allowing different properties. SLS is a relatively new technology that so far has mainly been used for rapid prototyping and for low-volume production of component parts. Production roles are expanding as the commercialization of AM technology improves.
A ball mill is a type of grinder used to grind and blend materials for use in mineral dressing processes, paints, pyrotechnics, ceramics and selective laser sintering. It works on the principle of impact and attrition: size reduction is done by impact as the balls drop from near the top of the shell.
A mill is a device that breaks solid materials into smaller pieces by grinding, crushing, or cutting. Such comminution is an important unit operation in many processes. There are many different types of mills and many types of materials processed in them. Historically mills were powered by hand, working animal, wind (windmill) or water (watermill). Today they are usually powered by electricity.
A pellet mill, also known as a pellet press, is a type of mill or machine press used to create pellets from powdered material. Pellet mills are unlike grinding mills, in that they combine small materials into a larger, homogeneous mass, rather than break large materials into smaller pieces.
A pulverizer or grinder is a mechanical device for the grinding of many different types of materials. For example, a pulverizer mill is used to pulverize coal for combustion in the steam-generating furnaces of fossil fuel power plants.
A rawmill is the equipment used to grind raw materials into "rawmix" during the manufacture of cement. Rawmix is then fed to a cement kiln, which transforms it into clinker, which is then ground to make cement in the cement mill. The rawmilling stage of the process effectively defines the chemistry of the finished cement, and has a large effect upon the efficiency of the whole manufacturing process.
A high-shear mixer disperses, or transports, one phase or ingredient into a main continuous phase (liquid), with which it would normally be immiscible. A rotor or impeller, together with a stationary component known as a stator, or an array of rotors and stators, is used either in a tank containing the solution to be mixed, or in a pipe through which the solution passes, to create shear. A high-shear mixer can be used to create emulsions, suspensions, lyosols, and granular products. It is used in the adhesives, chemical, cosmetic, food, pharmaceutical, and plastics industries for emulsification, homogenization, particle size reduction, and dispersion.
A conical mill is a machine used to reduce the size of material in a uniform manner. It is an alternative to the hammermill or other forms of grinding mills. As the name implies, the conical mill varies in diameter from where the feed enters to where the product exits.
Granulation is the process of forming of grains or granules from a powdery or solid substance, producing a granular material. It is applied in several technological processes in chemical and pharmaceutical industry. Typically, granulation involves agglomeration of fine particles into larger granules, typically of size range between 0.2 and 4.0 mm depending on their subsequent use. Less commonly, it involves shredding or grinding solid material into finer granules or pellets.
Vertical roller mill is a type of grinder used to grind materials into extremely fine powder for use in mineral dressing processes, paints, pyrotechnics, cements and ceramics. It is an energy efficient alternative for a ball mill.
Comminution is the reduction of solid materials from one average particle size to a smaller average particle size, by crushing, grinding, cutting, vibrating, or other processes. In geology, it occurs naturally during faulting in the upper part of the Earth's crust. In industry, it is an important unit operation in mineral processing, ceramics, electronics, and other fields, accomplished with many types of mill. In dentistry, it is the result of mastication of food. In general medicine, it is one of the most traumatic forms of bone fracture.
Tableting is a method of pressing medicine or candy into tablets. Confectionery manufacture shares many similarities with pharmaceutical production.
Vibratory Fluidized Bed (VFB) is a type of fluidized bed where the mechanical vibration enhances the performance of fluidization process. Since the first discovery of vibratory fluidized bed, its vibration properties proves to be more efficient in dealing with fine particles which appears to be very difficult to achieve with normal fluidized bed. Even though numerous publications and its popularity in industrial applications, the knowledge about vibratory dynamics and properties are very limited. Future research and development are needed to further improve this technology to bring it to another level.
The corn wet-milling is a process of breaking corn kernels into their component parts: corn oil, protein, corn starch, and fiber. It uses water and a series of steps to separate the parts to be used for various products.
Agglomerated food powder is a unit operation during which native particles are assembled to form bigger agglomerates, in which the original particle can still be distinguished. Agglomeration can be achieved through processes that use liquid as a binder or methods that do not involve any binder.
Food powder is the most common format of food material in the market. Powders are particulate discrete solid particles of size ranging from nanometres to millimetres that generally flow freely when shaken or tilted. The bulk powder properties are the combined effect of particle properties by the conversion of food products in solid state into powdery form for ease of use, processing and keeping quality. Various terms are used to indicate the particulate solids in bulk, such as powder, granules, flour and dust, though all these materials can be treated under powder category. These common terminologies are based on the size or the source of the materials.