Micro Pulse Mixing- An Efficient Mixing Method of Small Quantities of Powders

Abstract

This paper describes a novel mixing method together with mixing device. The Micro Pulse Mixer ( ) PM µ has been designed, constructed and tested using a new mixing concept based on damped harmonic oscillator motion. Advantages of the technique include simplicity of the device, high rates of mixing and high uniformity of product. Furthermore, the device design, with discrete powder containers, allows rapid loading and unloading of samples ( ) 60s -30 enabling powder sampling and/or complex blending operations. The mixer does not require frequent cleaning. It is designed to mix relatively small volumes of powders (up to several grams) for use in either laboratory work or for small commercial samples of high value.In this study we compared the PM µ method with rotating tumbling mixing.Mixing products were evaluated by analysis of scanning electron microscope (SEM) images while X-ray diffraction (XRD) was used to monitor phase evolution A. M. AKSENCZUK et al. 78 during mixing. Powder particle distributions were obtained based on image analysis techniques with mixing efficiency parameters determined based on the calculation of the percentage compounds content within sampled powder is proposed.We believe that the more efficient approach of impulse mixing could be beneficial for laboratory purposes and as a simple and cost-effective powder mixing and blending method.