What Is a Vacuum Mixer?

A vacuum mixer is a mixing device that allows for more homogeneous and bubble-free mixtures. This reduces air incorporation during mixing and improves the reliability of the material.

For dental applications, this helps fabricate void-free casts that are more durable than traditional hand-mixed materials. Vacuum environments also minimize oxygen to prevent decomposition and thwart unwanted chemical reactions and microbial growth.

Homogenization

Homogenization is a fluid mechanical process that reduces particle size, making dispersions or emulsions more stable. It uses a force to disrupt the particles or droplets of the liquid creating high shear and reducing their size to a small range. There are multiple types of forces used in homogenization. Homogenizers used in food blending use a combination of high pressure, shear and impact to achieve the best results. Here at BEE International we have a large variety of homogenizers from various manufacturers ranging in size, stage and power to match your application.

Homogenization in a vacuum mixer is an essential step in the production of many foods such as milk and cream. It is also widely used vacuum mixer in cosmetic and pharmaceutical applications. The main goal of homogenization is to make a mixture uniform throughout, for example decreasing the size of fat globules in milk so that they don’t cluster and rise during creaming.

Vacuum technology is useful in this process because it helps prevent oxidation of the powdered active ingredient in the liquid. This is important because oxidation decreases the shelf life of the product. Another important step in the homogenization process is heat pasteurization which is often done in a vacuum mixer. This is done to help prevent bacterial growth and improve the product’s taste. This is because heat pasteurization reduces the cryo-globulin complex that clusters fat globules during creaming.

Fermentation and synthesis

Vacuum mixers are often used in the preparation of medical cements, amalgam and other materials that tend to fail if air bubbles form. They can also be helpful in dispersing powdered active ingredients in liquids. Such mixing can be a time-consuming process that can cause inhomogeneous distribution of the liquid and powder, but vacuum mixing prevents this from occurring and helps to minimize gas inclusions in the final product.

In other cases, the use of a vacuum environment is simply about eliminating oxygen to preserve the quality of sensitive ingredients or thwart mixer manufacturer unwanted chemical reactions and microbial growth. Whether a company’s products are cosmetics, pharmaceuticals or high-value molded composites, the use of an oxygen-free mixture is important to the performance and shelf life of the final product.

The food processing industry relies on a wide variety of ingredients and feedstocks, from animal proteins to plant proteins, fats and oils. Increasingly, companies are turning to fermentation to produce these ingredients. In order to do so, the industry needs high-throughput screening and characterization tools, new strain development to pave the way for workhorse species to outperform the incumbents, and visionary regulatory leadership to streamline commercial adoption of these candidates. Having a flexible vacuum mixer to agitate and homogenize these new products in the early stages of formulation can make it much easier for businesses to nimbly tap into the growing universe of fermentable proteins and other foodstuffs.

Impregnation

Vacuum environments accomplish a number of mixing goals that vary from one application to another. In some products, vacuum is applied to a vapor-free mixture in order to improve the appearance of coated or personal care product or to ensure the strength and precision of specially engineered parts. In others, vacuum is used to remove oxygen and prevent decomposition of sensitive ingredients or thwart unwanted chemical reactions or microbial growth. In foods, the vacuum environment can help reduce oxygen content in beverages to extend shelf life.

Vacuum impregnation can also be used to modify physico-chemical properties and sensory attributes of food products. For example, in some experiments with pineapples, vacuum impregnation was used to replace osmotic dehydration by a sucrose solution. This reduced tissue shrinkage while retaining the quality of the candied product. It was also found that impregnation can increase the health-promoting contents of plant foods. Examples of this include adding cryoprotectants, inhibitors of enzymatic browning or compounds that enhance tissue compactness and inhibit its softening.

Vacuum impregnation in a vacuum mixer can also be useful for the coating of powdered active ingredients onto carrier materials. The vacuum is created inside the mixer and the system pressure is gradually increased to atmospheric value during the impregnation process. This enables the free spaces and capillaries within the powdered carrier material to be filled by the impregnating substance. The process can then be continued until the desired amount of impregnating agent is on the surface of the powdered carrier material.

Sublimation

A vacuum mixer can be used to sublimate substances. The process is especially useful for high-purity chemicals that have a low vapor pressure and can’t be sublimated at elevated temperatures. The process also provides convenient operational processes for sustaining appropriate product purity and conducting business operations.

For example, when preparing dental impression materials, such as alginates, for dental cements, a vacuum mixture helps prevent air bubbles and ensures a thoroughly mixed preparation that will perform better than one made by hand. Vacuum mixing is also helpful for mixing and degassing materials in the manufacturing industry, like plastic resins and epoxies. In addition, it’s often necessary to sublimate wet or moist dispersions to avoid the formation of bubbles and deterioration of the materials.

The process of sublimation in a vacuum mixer is as follows. Place the material carrier in a boat-shaped vessel, seal and tighten the two end pipes, extract air until the vacuum degree reaches 9.2×10-6 mbar, heat the heating evaporation device, keep the temperature of the center at a level higher than that of the two ends, scratch and collect products after the evaporation process, cool down the system and break vacuum. Repeat the above operation to obtain high-purity products. The sublimation purification apparatus can be used for a variety of chemical substances and products, including semiconductors, metals, glass, ceramics and other materials.