Surface Treating & Encapsulating powders and granules in the Rollo-Mixer®

The Rollo-Mixer® and its exclusive Free-Fall Processing® provides superior uniform liquid dispersions onto dry particulates for accurate surface treating. We have been involved in many surface treating and fine powder processing applications over the years, but none like the glass bubbles we successfully coated for our customer in 1999. This is an ideal model for surface coating because we are spraying a liquid onto a surface that does not absorb — in essence the opposite of impregnating. These hollow, spherical glass bubbles are only 2 to 10 micron and weigh only 6 to 10 lbs/ft3. They are used in low density filler applications for the automotive, petrochemical and aerospace industries.

The goal was to evenly distribute a low inclusion (.025 %) liquid solution throughout all of the surface area of the bubbles. The amount of surface area to coat is enormous. Free-Fall Processing® exposed all of the surface area of the glass bubbles without damaging any of the fragile particles. Encapsulating powders to granules with a binder is an exciting process the Rollo-Mixer® is well suited for, because it requires a combination of mixing and coating in one. In one application, the goal was to encapsulate or encase the vitamins onto the rice by spraying the binder in free-fall. Because of the gentle, distributive mix action the vitamin powder and rice particles are uniformly mixed. The process sprays food glue into a uniform free-falling curtain and sealing the vitamins around the rice.