Industrial Static Mixer for Mixing & Blending Systems
What Is an Industrial Static Mixer?
An industrial static mixer — also often called an inline or motionless mixer — is a piece of equipment that combines materials without moving parts. The primary purpose of static mixers is to introduce materials, such as fluids or a combination of fluids, solids or gases, that may have different properties and create a homogeneous combination. With strictly controlled introduction, consistency remains throughout batches.
How Does a Static Mixer Work?
Industrial static mixer equipment relies on mixing elements to combine materials rapidly. The individual components enter the mixing tube through injection ports or piping tees or wyes before the mixer’s housing or through an introduction point on the mixer housing itself. External pumps may help force the materials through the mixing elements. Because there are no moving parts, static mixers are a low-maintenance, cost-effective, and fireproof solution to more volatile mixing challenges.
Two basic principles influence how static mixers operate — turbulent flow and laminar flow. Different mixing components may use one method or a combination of both depending on material properties. In laminar (or streamlined) flow, material properties like movement velocity and pressure stay consistent across motion points. Two materials with similar properties come together in the chamber, meet the mixing element, and exit as one.
Conversely, turbulent flow introduces irregularities into the movement by forcing the mixture through a series of elements that divides their inherent layers. The process-specific mixer element design “cut” the dissimilar materials together with the same result — a homogeneously mixed marriage of the two at the exit point.
The inner mixing chambers may also rely on heating and cooling features and constant air pressure to produce desirable results. Static mixers provide great versatility because engineers customize the mixing element around material properties like viscosity and volumetric flow for performance. The exact configuration depends heavily upon the mixing materials and manufacturing processes.
Applications for Static Mixers
Individualized design flexibility facilitates many industrial static mixer applications, including:
- Chemical Processing, Pharmaceuticals & Biotech Processes: Provides rapid low shear blending, dispersion, and uniform heat transfer for critical processes
- Manufacturing with injection or extrusion methods: Produce homogeneous combinations of product material and colored dyes with static mixers outfitted with heating features.
- Waste and wastewater treatment: Control pH levels, dissolve ozone, or mix ground and surface waters.
- Polymer production: Cool, heat and easily introduce melts with low viscosity.
Contact Our Team of Experts
The pros at New England Sales draw on their 30 years of experience to help you choose the right static mixing system for your unique business needs. Schedule an on-site visit and trust our expertise, guidance and support to get the right equipment for your specific applications. Call us at 781-826-8855 for immediate service, or reach out to one of our experts by email today!