News

Flexible gas analysis system: a nose for oxygen Oxygen is often not welcome in industrial environments. It is highly reactive and can seriously jeopardise process safety and product quality. However, not all oxygen measurements can be easily determined with a classical oxygen meter, e.g. in places where the measuring point is difficult to reach, at higher temperatures or when the process pressure is high. Therefore SICK has developed with Transic 100 a flexible gas analysis system for extractive oxygen measurements where a tunable diode laser is used to accurately determine the oxygen content.

2 Short courses for the Ports industries The issues surrounding the safe handling and storage of bulk materials at port and at sea is examined during 2 on-line short courses; one looking at general safety issues, the other concentrating on the difficulties encountered when handling and transporting biomass materials. We invite you to attend: 8 - 11 March: Port and Terminal Operations for Bulk Cargoes - bulk materials handling and safety issues at ports and at sea Subject areas covered include: •Ship unloading technologies (Grabs vs CSUs, different CSU technologies) •Conveying technologies (pneumatic vs belt) •Storage and discharge technologies (silos, flat stores, stacking etc) •Loading/unloading control (weighing, controlling ship bending etc) •Rail and road outloading equipment and control •Explosion and fire risks and management (ATEX, fire control and management) •Mobile plant and safety •Developments in automation and autonomous vehicles 22 - 26 March: Biomass Operations and Handling Technology - an

Safety In HETHON`s view, commercial interests should never take precedence over safety. ATEX, a term originally derived from the French name Atmosphères Explosibles. A word that refers to the European directives regarding explosion hazard. Certainly not something to deal with the proverbial French battle. Unfortunately, you see in the professional field too often that producers think that the well-known yellow sticker and the installation of EX electric motors only a safe product is produces and sell it for ‘ATEX’. At HETHON they take safe working seriously. This also applies to customers who come to them for ATEX dosing machines. First of all, the entire environment in which the Feeder and related equipment will be placed must comply with the applicable guidelines. That is up to the customer. Certification A certification is not something you make yourself. This may only be done by a notified body and repeated every 5 years. A process which HETHON has just gone through

For more Efficiency in Compounding To further increase the efficiency of our compounders in daily operation, ZSK extruders can now be optionally equipped with an electronically secured maintenance door at the gearbox lantern. As soon as the screw shafts of the extruder come to a complete stop, service personnel can open the gearbox lantern without tools, guaranteeing secure, easy access to the screw shaft coupling. During maintenance, for example, this reduces the machine’s downtimes, thus again contributing to greater efficiency of ZSK extruders. The electronically secured maintenance door at the gearbox lantern is available for extruder sizes ZSK 32 and larger.

Fluid bed and spouted bed technologies from Glatt offer multiple benefits for food processing. Particles can be economically refined, functionalized and dried at the same time via spray granulation, spray coating or spray agglomeration (Fig. 1). Whether it’s protein shakes, vitaminized hot drinks or sugar substitutes like xylitol, maltitol and lactitol, instant powders with value-added ingredients need certain core characteristics. They must be easy to dose, quick to dissolve, non-clumping and low in dust; they mustn’t separate or leave residues in hot water or cold dairy or plant-based milk drinks, but they should make for a pleasant mouthfeel. These key properties, as well as low bulk density, can be achieved by using spray agglomeration in the fluid bed. The porous structure of agglomerated particles is what determines the wetting and solubility behavior, ease of use and, ultimately, the commercial success of an end product. For example, snack vending machines offering Cappuccino or hot soups require instantized products that can be precisely portioned via

Practical and well dispersed The new MasterMix® Dissolver is used for dispersing solids into liquids. The product is mixed in batches in an exchangeable tank. The dissolver is a fast, high-capacity disperser with a wide range of speeds and high level of efficiency. The product is accelerated radially by the dispersion disk, deflected to the top and bottom at the tank wall and directed back to the dispersion disk through formation of a vortex. Shear forces around the circumference of the toothed disk result in highly efficient dispersion, good wetting and de-agglomeration. For high-viscosity products, a tank wall scraping device can aid the mixing and dispersing process. Netzsch mastermix Dissolvers are standard equipped with : Operator friendly push-button speed control via frequency inverter and speed indicator with automatic speed reduction, hydraulic lifting/lowering device, push-button stroke adjustment, an adjustable tank clamping mechanism, stainless steel shaft and dispersion disk, additional