Frequently Asked Questions

We’ve integrated delumping processes for a variety of reasons, from front-end to back-end of a process line. We’ve delumped raw feed materials that have naturally lumped in transport. We’ve delumped wet materials just before strainers or spray nozzles on downstream equipment. And we’ve delumped cohesive materials as the final step before packaging, resulting in a homogeneous, lump-free end product.

Delumping, or deagglomerating, is typically referred to as the act of reducing or breaking apart agglomerates that have formed as a result of cohesion, heat, etc. These lumps/agglomerates may form due to cohesive materials making up the feed, the process environment (humidity), or the natural tendency of solids to bind together. Delumping serves as the means to breaking these lumps into the individual particles that the comprise of.

We design our mills per order, meaning each machine is specifically designed for your material, rate, requirements, and abrasion/corrosion tendencies. Solutions include altering materials of construction, designing wear inserts, or

In short, yes you can. Whether Bepex can help will depend on your process and material. If your intention is to fine grind a wet material, outputting a paste or puree, there is potential that we can achieve this process on one of our Disintegrators. If you are needing to dry your wet solids while fine grinding, our Pulvocron or PCX would likely be able to achieve this process.

At Bepex, we typically cross the threshold into fine grinding when the product particle size averages 100 mesh and finer. Our average particle size in fine grinding operations can range between 100 mesh and 3 µm.

This typically will depend on a number of factors, including material, rate, and technology. Typically in an application where we are grinding particles, we can achieve an average particle size from 1” down to 100 mesh. If we are deagglomerating/delumping particles that have formed a cluster, we can expect the resulting particle size to match that of the individual particles making up the lumps/agglomerates.

This will depend on the machine size. When we design equipment for a certain process, the incoming feed size will be accounted for to ensure proper operation. We commonly grind whole fruits and vegetables in our mills. If it make sense to pre-size before our hammer mills.

As with most answers, this is largely material-dependent. The short answer is yes, you can coarse grind wet materials. However, this answer requires a bit more exploration into the specific process requirements to give a more accurate answer.

At Bepex, we use the term coarse grinding to cover milling applications that produce a particle size ranging from 1” to 100 mesh, on average. This typically covers our hammer mills and block grinders.

The best way to determine if a certain technology can handle your specific materials is to demonstrate it in a representative environment. We carry out continuous reaction tests in our Process Development Center, pairing the best technology to the application.

Through mechanical agitation, process materials receive more consistent treatment, allowing for faster and more complete reaction processes. The agitation can often help overcome difficult reaction phases typically seen in liquid-solid reactions.

Continuous operation typically increases throughput, lowers labor requirements, and minimizes material touchpoints.

If the material is pressable, it is worth exploring the potential mechanical reduction of moisture prior to a drying step. By mechanically reducing the moisture content, you lower utility requirements in your drying process while reducing the overall size, footprint, and energy demand of the system.

By nature, direct drying processes require large amounts of heated process gas/air to evaporate solvents. The recovery systems required to safely handle the evaporated solvent would be large, inefficient, and unpractical.

Using an indirect drying process under an inert environment we can safely remove and recover VOC’s while simultaneously drying your solids to as low as PPM or PPB moisture levels.

Incorporating a cooler provides the ability to halt a reaction to prevent further material changes, to prevent further moisture loss, or to lower product temperature ahead of packaging or downstream processing.

We occasionally opt to incorporate a separate heating step into our processes ahead of reaction or crystallization processes, where a certain material temperature is required to carry out the process and it’s not advantageous to complete the process in a single step.

If you can perform any mechanical separation (centrifugation, decanting, filtration, pressing, etc.) without losing valuable product to the effluent (waste) stream, then YES. Moisture removed mechanically lowers the BTU required in drying, leading to smaller dryers, less emissions, and lower utility requirements.

Given the dangers with handling VOC’s, in both operating and recovery, we typically utilize and indirect dryer in our solvent recovery systems. Indirect drying systems typically require less process gas, reducing the size of reclamation components making recovery more economical and practical. Direct drying recovery of VOC’s is possible, but would require extensive scrubbing systems to recover.

Constant rate drying represents the evaporation of free moisture. Falling rate drying is the transition into evaporating the diffusion-limited moisture.

Direct drying uses a heated air/gas stream in direct contact with the processed materials. Indirect drying incorporates a vessel wall that separates the thermal media (steam, hot oil, electricity) from the process materials. To learn more, check this out (link to more in depth content)