Xie L., Rielly C.D., Eagles W., Özcan-Taşkin G. De-agglomeration of pre-wetted nano-particles using

12th European Conference on Mixing, Bologna, 27-30 June 2006When nano-particulate Aerosil 200V powders are dispersed into water, agglomerates as
large as hundreds of microns are formed initially. To break down these agglomerates, a number of impellers which generate different power inputs and flow patters were studied. The low energy dissipation impeller configurations, e.g. single LE-20, PBT, dual PBTs, dual LE-20s and 6DT, provided only a small degree of deagglomeration and their flow patterns did not affect the results. At high rotational speeds, the higher local energy dissipation created by the EkatoMizer impeller could break the Aerosil agglomerates into submicron particles, but the rate of the de-agglomeration was slow.