Heating Cooling Mixer

Kenneth Heating Cooling Mixer is a combination of heating mixer and cooling mixer for the blending of PVC resin and additives. In order to have the free flowing dry PVC blends for the afterwards melt compounding into PVC products, the pre-compounding of PVC resin and additives via heating cooling mixer has to go through the heating mixing process and cooling mixing process.

In short, the heating mixer firstly homogenizes the PVC compounds via high speed mixing tools. Meanwhile, the intensive motion not only grinds solids into finer particles, but also cause a rapid temperature raise by self-frictions of compounds. The increase on temperature provides condition for PVC resin to fully absorb liquid additive(plasticizer/oil) and eliminates moisture from the compounds. The mixtures after heating mixing process are well dispersed, homogenized fine dry compounds except hot and not stable.

Thus, a right after cooling mixing process is needed to eliminate electrostatic charge on polymers caused by high friction mixing, cool down the hot compounds to avoid over heat of temperature sensitive compositions, increase the free flowing property and minimize the tendency of agglomeration. Mixtures after the cooling mixing process are final stable free flowing fine PVC dry blends which could be stored or further processed into PVC products right away.

Typically, the heating mixer is set back over the cooling mixer so that hot mixtures after heating mixing could be discharge into cooling mixer directly in time. Considering the synchronization of heating mixing process and cooling mixing process, the mixing tank capacity of cooling mixer is usually 2-4 times of heat mixer for sufficient cooling capacity within a batch cycle of 6-8 minutes.

Kenneth Heating Cooling Mixer has 2 types of combinations: KVM vertical mixing unit and KHM horizontal mixing unit for PVC applications. Both vertical and horizontal mixing units have the following features:

• Suitable for a wide range of applications such as heating, agglomerating, bonding, grinding etc

• Process optimized mixing tools and process tailored configurations

• Durable and reliable mechanical drives and transmissions

• Excellent filters for dust control and de-humidification of mixtures

• Diverse optional auxiliaries for customized requests

• High cooling efficiency of optimized cooling tank and lid

• Optimized design for easy cleaning and maintenance

Know How

Q1: Why the PVC heating cooling mixer combination has 2 mixers?

The PVC heating cooling mixer combination has 1 heating mixer and 1 cooling mixer. The 2 mixers work together as a unit but for different mixing jobs. The heating mixing process is an intensive, high speed mixing process with temperature raised up to 145 degree C. While the cooling mixing process cool down the PVC mixtures from heating mixer to 45 degree C.

Q2: How to distinguish the vertical mixer and the horizontal mixer?

Both vertical mixer and horizontal mixer have cylindrical vessel except the former’s vessel is shorter in the cylindrical surface and set vertically(flat surface upwards). While the latter’s vessel is longer in cylindrical surface and set horizontally. See the below sketch drawings:

Q3: Why the heating cooling mixer combination is used for all rigid PVC application?

The heating cooling mixer combination enables the hot mixtures from high speed heating mixer to be discharged directly into the cooling mixer and then cooled down to 45 degree C for the following benefits:

1. To avoid unnecessary heating history of PVC compounds which may have thermal sensitive compositions.

2. The rapid cooling down of the hot mixtures minimizes the tendency of agglomeration.

3. The rapid cold shock increases the free flowing property of PVC dry blends.