Extrusion

Bepex® offers this approach of extrusion to producing granules when consistent pellet shape and particle strength are important. Extrusion is the process of pressing material through a die plate to form a cylindrical pellet. Low-pressure extrusion requires that the material be in a dough-like consistency at the die. The dough-like consistency can come from addition of a liquid or binder material, or from binder already present in the feed.

Bepex® has several sizes of low-pressure extruders available to meet a wide range of applications. In the extrusion system pictured at the right, a feeder meters the powder feed into a premixer. The premixer mixes the powder feeds with any liquid / binder feed that is needed. The mixed feed then drops into an extruder to be formed into pellets. The pellets break off at the die of the extruder and fall into a fluid bed dryer for drying and / or conditioning.

Low-pressure extruders form a medium density pellet that exhibits good solubility. The product's higher density (versus instant mixing agglomeration) can be useful in controlled release applications.

Extrud-O-Mix®

The Extrud-O-Mix® can mix multiple solid and liquid streams on
a continuous basis and form pellets. Mixing is controlled by
intermediate orifice plates and screw shaft configuration.