History of Agglomerators

Often there is a production step where it is required to mix various dry ingredients. To ensure a homogeneous mix, a wet mixing stage is necessary.

A vast majority of manufacturers use horizontal drum agglomerators; often two in tandem for this purpose. These agglomerators always produce a significant percentage of unusable oversize lumps, sometimes several inches in diameter. Disposing of these lumps is not economical so they must be reworked into the batch. The typical solution is to pass all material through a screener to remove the unwanted lumps.

The lumps are then reduced to powder by a hammermill and returned to the agglomerator. However, the hammermills cannot handle the hot lumps immediately due to the moisture which causes screen blockage so a very costly waiting period is necessary for the material to cool. Storage vessels, space, time and handling are required. One solution which eliminates hammermills is to pass the whole batch through huge oscillating granulators immediately after the agglomerater for a much simpler continuous operation.

These granulators frequently break screens, contaminating the batch and causing down time. The overall result is just slightly better than when using hammermills. Many manufacturers have a real need for a method to reduce the lumps caused by agglomeraters. However they need a solution that is better than hammermills or oscillating granulators.