Product Trials

Anderson Engineering are very proud to be able to offer our clients, the services of our Product Trial Laboratory, with our recently designed and fabricated miniature pilot plant. The plant includes our flag ship Contra-Mix vessel and trials will be conducted on a 50L miniature version fully integrated into a turnkey processing plant.

This allows us, as a turnkey process equipment manufacturers, to prove process capability prior to rolling out large scale equipment, therefore reducing overall capital input and more importantly, risk, for our customers. Customers will now be able to engage with us to effectively test and cost engineer their process to ensure a more streamlined large-scale project roll out.

Production and processing on a large scale involves an element of risk and considerable time and investment. For some manufacturers, implementing new innovations straight from the laboratory can be considered risky or unsafe. There are many elements to consider such as problematic mixing, slow or hard-to-control reactions and product output. There is no substitute for eliminating risk as a physical version that runs in the real world. Our product trial facility can also be used for demo facilities and for testing new recipes and technologies.

APPLICATIONS:

Our product trial facility is useful for a wide range of processing applications. The food, pharmaceutical and cosmetic manufacturers predominantly require the product trial facilities, for a wide range of products such as creams; lotions; washes; ointments; mayonnaise and a wide range of sauces. There is however also merit for many other industries and applications.

FEATURES:

Like a processing plant, our scaled down replica pilot plant offers the complexity of a full scale production facility. Our product trial facility is capable of a wide range of mixing complexities and processes. This includes:

general mixing
emulsification
heating and cooling of products
premix vessels
introduction of ingredients via vacuum transfer
cooking under pressure
clean in place (CIP)

SIZES:

20L side pot with a 50L Contramix

EQUIPMENT:

The pilot plant consists of the following equipment.

50L Contra-mix as the Main Processing Vessel with the following features:

Handle 1 bar Pressure and Vacuum.
High Shear Emulsifier which has the capabilities of recirculation and discharging the product.
Heating and cooling: customizable (depending on customer requirements and availability of ancillaries (steam/glycol/cooling water)
- On the Contra-mix we can heat to +/-90 degrees (Hot Water) and cool to +/-30 degrees (Mains Water)
- On the Side Pot we can heat to +/- 90 degrees (Hot Water)
Dual Drive Contra-Rotating Mixing Action – Anchor fitted with Scraper Blades
Automatic Temperature Control
Speed Monitoring on the Mixers
Automatic Water Dosing

20L Side Pot (Pre-mix) with the following features:

Jacketed with Heating to +/-85 to 106 degrees
Anchor Mixing System
Automatic Temperature Control

Ancillary Items:

100L Silent Air compressor with hygienic filtration for product push
A combined heating/cooling unit for heating and cooling using water
Complete electrical and control panel with all required switchgear and PLC
Independent 12” HMI
Skid mounted with plug in 3 phase electrical connection

PROCESS REPORTING:

The control system uses a Scada system to control and log certain data values such that a detailed report on the process parameters as per the following:

Product temperature in both vessels
Vessel internal pressure
Mixer Speeds (Hz and RPM on the contra-mix anchor and inner)
Air flow rate and consumption
Water introduction rate
Jacket valve feedback
All values will be trended over the specified process period.

FUTURE DEVELOPMENTS:

We have the following future developments planned for the pilot plant:

Emulsifier head change parts to offer varying particle sizes
Retrofitting our ACE (Anderson-Combo Emulsi-mix) unit to the 50L vessel
High Speed Impellor change parts 20L Pre-Mix Vessel
Addition of a cooling circuit to achieve lower temperatures