The Pallmann Group, a worldwide size reduction and preparation machines supplier, announced on August 31 that its grinding equipments
were chosen by Clariant Masterbatches for production.
As introduced, the Pallmann mills can easily and efficiently handle all the main polymers by Clariant Masterbatches with the need for special cooling with liquid nitrogen. Polyethylenes (PE) are the predominant proportion of powders Clariant makes at its Italian plants Merate and Pogliano just outside of Milan, Italy. Clariant also grinds thermoplastic polyesters (PET), polypropylene (PP) and polyamides (PA) for masterbatch applications.
“Our most important machines are six Pallmann PKM 600 and 800 mills, with capacities of 450kg to 1200kg per hour,” said Clariant Masterbatches Production Manager Maurizio Brzuszkiewicz. “For PP and PA, very often particle sizes of less than 400 microns for special applications and very narrow size distributions are needed.”
In order to meet the requirements, Clariant used one of the world’s largest size reduction testing centers in the technology laboratory at Pallmann’s headquarters in Zweibrücken, Germany. Various preliminary tests were carried out, especially on blade shapes and blade clearance settings, to optimize them for specific customers and materials.
According to Pallmann, low equipment maintenance cost, low specific energy consumption (no nitrogen cooling above all) and high productivity of the mills can be achieved.
“Maintenance essentially means sharpening the knives,” said Mr Brzuszkiewicz. “We do that on average every 1500 hours, with PP and PA it’s rather more often.” Other maintenance operations are very rare – this applies equally when new materials are being processed, which speaks for the robustness and versatility of the plant, as well as for its cost-effectiveness.
With its new Polygrinder, Pallmann has also launched a new mill onto the market that offers additional application advantages. In particular, the range of materials that can be ground to a high quality without nitrogen cooling has been extended to include complex materials such as ethylene vinyl alcohol (EVA) with high VA content. The Polygrinder can also handle a polypropylene (PP) copolymer that, according to the company, cannot be processed on any other commercially available mill.
Source : www.adsalecprj.com
