Manufacturing processes paste mixing

Welcome Food is very impressed with the speed of the PDX process - it mixed and cooked a 60 kg batch of sauce in three minutes, compared with an hour for conventional plant . It has also been used to make stocks, soups and chutneys. It may enable us to create new sauces, pastes and other products that cannot be manufactured commercially using conventional processes , says operations director Alex Sutton. The faster cooking and mixing, together with short changeover times, will make a significant difference to our business . 

Paste mixing is one of the most important processes in battery manufacturing and greatly affects the quality and life of a battery. The paste mixing machine is fully automatic and programmable logic controller (PLC) controlled. The machine comprises the main parts discussed next. 

Most plastics e.g. polyolefins and polystyrenes and their derivatives such as ABS (acrylonitrile-butadiene-styrene) and SAN (styrene-acrylonitrile) are supplied by the manufacturers in ready-to-use form with most of the above-mentioned stabilizers or simply need to be additionally stabilized with other additives, e.g. antistatic agents and HALS stabilizers, as required. On the other hand, in the case of other materials (e.g. PVC) it is the end user who adds the additives, pigments or preparations. This is normally done on fluid or high-speed mixers, although in the past gravity mixers or tumble mixers were also used. The mixture is then homogenized on mixing rolls, kneaders, planetary extruders or twin-screw kneaders and further processed. 

Very often the differential rolling mills are used here two horizontal cylindrical rolls rotate at different circumferential speeds (the ratio of the speeds being 1.5-2 to 1). This uneven rotation produces a shearing action which facilitates mixing. The further processes of manufacture may vary. Usually the paste is subjected to a final rolling. 

---