DELUMPING DETERGENT AGGLOMERATES

Background / Requirement

One necessary step in detergent production is to mix the various dry ingredients. To ensure a homogeneous mix, a wet mixing stage is necessary. The vast majority of manufacturers use horizontal drum agglomerators; often two in tandem for this purpose. Such agglomerators always produce a significant percentage of unusable oversize lumps, sometimes 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. Unfortunately such granulators frequently break screens, contaminating the batch and causing down time. The overall result is just slightly better than when using hammermills.

Detergent 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.

Comil Performance The Comil was able to accept the entire hot, moist, immediate discharge of the agglomerator containing lumps up to 6 inches (150 mm) in diameter. This completely eliminated the need for any extra handling steps such as sifting, screening and cooling. The product discharged from the Comil was granular, free flowing and ideally sized with a high surface area suitable for drying. As an added bonus, both moisture and ingredients were uniformly dispersed forming a homogeneous free flowing discharged product. Screen breakage and plug-ups have never been a problem. Summary The Quadro Comil has been performing this task around the clock trouble-free without screen breakage or plugging. It has ended the former costly downtime and cooling periods. Infeed size and moisture variations can be tolerated by the Comil assuring maximum flexibility. Due to the Comil's low RPM operation, very little typical maintenance is required.