Sigma blade mixing with a high-viscous Non-Newtonian fluid

Mixing of materials is used in many industries such as the chemical-, food-, and pharma-industry. One of the most used mixing devices, in suspensions with a very high solid loading of particles, is the twin sigma blades. These blades handle very viscous suspensions. Nevertheless, obtaining a homogeneous material post mixing, is a non-trivial task. In this paper, a Taguchi DOE is performed on a pilot-scale twin-sigma-blade mixer to study the homogeneity of adhesive materials. The batches are mixed with varying particle purity, initial fluid temperature, mixing-temperature, -time, and –rotation. The results illustrate that purifying the particles has a very positive impact on the homogeneity of the adhesive barriers.