Netzsch LabPilot: Flexible grinding/classifying system for product development

During the industrial manufacture of various products in the food and luxury food sectors as well as in the chemical industry grinding and classifying are both important process steps. This is true not only in production scale, but also in laboratory scale for the development of new products and the search for new properties as well as to increase efficiency and reduce production cost. A wide field, which becomes more and more difficult and demanding. Modern laboratories should be capable of dealing with different process steps and requirements in an efficient and repeatable way.

Today’s laboratory plants usually concentrate on individual machines and tasks: In a grinding task followed by particle separation, the test product must be ground first, then collected and carried and reloaded to a second machine, where the classifying process takes place. This is a proceeding that involves a lot of dust and requires manpower, and can result in product contamination and even product loss. Besides space requirements for several machines, also explosion risks need to be handled on different places.

In comminution tasks, the particle fineness often has to be varied over a wide range to find the optimal size. The finer the product has to be, the more energy is required to achieve it. In addition, for many applications a controlled maximum particle size is important which cannot be achieved with standard impact milling technology. Furthermore, the demand to narrow the particle size distribution means that a certain proportion of coarse or fine product has to be separated after grinding. If this is in the range below 100 µm, air classification must be used.

NETZSCH expands the LabPilot: New standards in user-friendliness and flexibility

A smart solution has been developed by NETZSCH: They have expanded the well-known LabCompact system especially for such tasks and designed the new LabPilot system. In addition to a facelift that not only brought visual changes, but also further advantages in terms of user-friendliness, easy cleaning and maintenance, the LabPilot system has now been expanded to include additional grinding technologies. Thus, in addition to the jet and classifier mills previously available, the fine impact mill Condux® and the dry agitator bead mill SpheRho® can now also be used. This expands the possibilities for comminution to include additional areas of application.

Fine impact mill Condux® 60

The fine impact mill Condux® can process a wide variety of products up to a Mohs hardness of 3 - 3.5. Depending on the product properties and comminution task, the laboratory mill is equipped with different grinding tools (pin discs, blast rotor, wing beater) and stators. It thus flexibly covers a wide range of applications and is the ideal solution for initial feasibility studies and the production of small production quantities.

Dry agitator bead mill SpheRho® 1

Due to its operating mode and stress characteristics, the SpheRho® achieves very high finenesses combined with high throughput rates at low specific energy consumption. The main field of application is real comminution of various raw materials with typical product finenesses d50 in the range of 2 µm to 70 µm. The continuously operating dry agitator bead mill can be used in single pass without classifier as well as in grinding/classifying circuit.

No limits to flexibility

With only one installation, the plant can be quickly adapted and adjusted via the individual process gas volume so that all the following machine modules can be used:

• Fluidized Bed Jet Mill CGS 10
• High-Density Bed Jet Mill ConJet® 10
• Classifier Mill CSM 50
• Fine Impact Mill Condux® 60 with different grinding tools
• Dry Agitator Bead Mill SpheRho® 1
• Ultra-Fine Classifier CFS 5
• High-Efficiency Classifier CFS 5 HD-S