Agglomeration Advisor: The supermarket of agglomeration
Columnist William H. Engelleitner continues his exploration of consumer products made by agglomeration.
As I gathered information and samples in preparation for my last column (June, "Agglomeration in detergent production," page 14), I became aware of growing improvements in the size, uniformity, and shape diversity of consumer products made by one or a combination of agglomeration methods. Spray-drying with granulation, fluidbed granulation, high-shear mixer granulation, wet granulation in drums and discs, various extrusion and pellet mill processes, briquetting and compaction, tableting, encapsulation, and several instantizing methods are all used now for well-known consumer products, just as they’ve been used for many years in the mining, industrial minerals, cement, ceramics, coal, and bulk chemicals industries.