At AZO GmbH + Co. KG (Osterburken,
Germany), one of the world's leading suppliers of automated raw material
handling equipment, the introduction of the FT4 Powder Rheometer has
revolutionised the company's approach to powder characterisation. Replacing
older shear cell equipment and a basic powder tester, use of the FT4 has
dramatically reduced the time taken to reliably characterise a new powder
and enhanced AZO's ability to design and specify optimised solutions uniquely
tailored to individual customer needs.
By providing dynamic powder testing
capability, the FT4 Powder Rheometer is giving AZO a new set of parameters with
which to rationalise the in-process behaviour of powders. This additional
information and extra insight is helping the company to develop new, more
secure design protocols and to more efficiently identify optimal powder
handling solutions for its clients.
"The dynamic testing capability of the
FT4 is allowing us to look at our powders in a completely new way,"remarks
Michael Mayer, research engineer at AZO. "We're finding Basic Flowability
Energy (BFE) [a dynamic parameter] especially useful because it differentiates
powders so sensitively. It's now the test we first turn to when we get a new
material. But aeration testing is really valuable too because it gives us
insight into how the powder will behave in unit operations such as pneumatic
conveying. The FT4 is fully automated, so all the testing is quick, easy and
highly reproducible."
The teams at AZO are finding that BFE
data help to rationalise why certain powders behave well in certain types of
equipment. This means that by testing just a small amount of material the
company can now identify a suitable processing solution more confidently, ahead
of plant trials, which require much larger quantities of material. Other powder
properties are also proving highly relevant to performance in specific unit
operations. Work to fully exploit the potential of the FT4 is still in its
infancy but the expectation is that over the long term it will enable the
development of new design algorithms for key processes and significantly extend
the company's knowledge base.
For more information about the AZO
Group
http://www.azo.com/
For details about Freeman Technology's
powder characterisation solutions
www.freemantech.co.uk
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