High-Shear Blending Solutions for Industrial Mixing

Gary Seiffer

High-shear blending is typically used for processes that involve batch or continuous flow options. Those in the industrial sector need precision, repeatability, reliability, and the ability to fine-tune their processing solutions. Application types vary, but viscosity, particulate size and reduction, temperature, and raw materials impact the type of flow and equipment needed. We’ve applied our blending solutions to many products, including paint, food, ointments and creams, medicines, adhesives, oil-based products, and more. Read on to see the differences between high-shear blending, inline mixing, and colloid mills and which solution is ideal for your application.

High-Shear Blending

One of the most common challenges with industrial mixing is achieving the right consistency and particle reduction. That can become even more complicated when there’s multiple materials needing to be blended. Sometimes even the highest-quality commercial blender can’t blend extremely thick, viscous products together. That’s why EnSight Solutions carries high-shear blending systems. These complex systems rely on help from pumps to successfully mix large quantities of liquids or even solid ingredients, like frozen fruits and vegetables, helping you achieve the perfect texture that stays true to your recipe or formulation.

Our Likwifier division is the industry leader in bottom-drive high-shear blending and is designed to dissolve solids or semi-solids where time, temperature, and complete hydration are crucial. For more than 50 years, Likwifier machines have been used to manufacture ice cream mixes, candies, reconstituted products, canned condiments, sauces, salad dressing, fillings and many other similar items, making them extremely versatile.

Inline Mixers

Inline, dynamic mixing machines can significantly reduce mixing time. Their multiple high-shear-action zones confined in one mixing chamber can deliver the desired shear intensity performed on the product in a single pass. Finished product stability and superior particle distribution would otherwise be unattainable with traditional agitators or top-mounted mixing equipment.

Our Bematek line offers significant advancements in the art of mixing with innovative, versatile, and configurable inline machines that can optimize production and be easily matched to various raw material requirements. Our customers gain competitive advantage leveraging Bematek’s process industry knowledge and materials expertise. These benefits overcome the typical industrial emulsifying and homogenizing processing constraints, which would otherwise limit manufacturing innovation.

Colloid Mills

The milling of various materials is one of the oldest processing activities that still exists today in modern manufacturing environments. Our Bematek colloid mills are recognized as the equipment of choice for increasing the stability of suspensions or emulsions in today’s complex homogenizing processes. This equipment reduces particle size in dispersions and droplet size in emulsions by applying hydraulic and mechanical shear to various process ingredients. In addition, our Bematek machines provide manufacturers with simple, repeatable processing capabilities for fine-emulsion stability and dispersion uniformity. Our colloid mills are the simplest on the market today and have established a strong presence in the pharmaceutical, food and beverage, cosmetics, personal care, and chemical industries. Where other mills can be very complex and require the handling of many components to access internal parts, Bematek features minimal parts to handle, which reduces maintenance issues and increases safety.

Sanitation & Safety

Our customers want quality, robust machines, and you can be confident our equipment is built to last. At EnSight Solutions, we have more than 100 years of combined manufacturing experience. We’ve put our knowledge and experience to work, crafting equipment that meets stringent sanitation requirements. We use high-quality 304 stainless steel to construct all of our machines. This material can withstand high-water pressure and exposure to most cleaning agents without forming hard-to-clean dents and pits. Our mixers and blenders contain few moving parts, which means they have fewer crevices for bacteria to harbor inside.

Safety is a top priority at EnSight. For example, we’ve added vacuum-release valves to our blenders to protect them from rupturing or imploding when pulling a strong vacuum. Our blenders also feature external access to the internal impeller and seal, so your maintenance employees won’t need to enter the tank to make repairs. In addition, you can customize your EnSight blender with a split safety grate with interlock or a weld in the top safety grate.

The safety features on our high-shear blenders vary from model to model, and our EnSight Solutions sales specialists can brief you on the benefits of each one.

EnSight Solutions is ready to help you find the right solutions for your unique industrial mixing needs. Contact us today for more information.