Choosing a blender based on your material's flow properties
Knowing your material's flow properties can simplify blender selection by allowing you to predict the material's behavior in different blender types. This article focuses on three conditions required for blending efficiency -- a lack of stagnant regions, differences in flow velocities, and a lack of segregation -- and how to match your material properties to a blender to achieve these conditions.
Choosing the right blender for your materials can be a difficult and frustrating job. Vendors claim their blenders work efficiently, and their claims are generally true, provided the blenders are correctly chosen for your material. But if you change materials or your material formulation, or if you select a blender that's designed for materials other than the ones you're blending, you can run into trouble. A materials specialist or calculations based on your material's flow properties' can help you match your material with a blender as shown in Table 1.