Vibration Assisted Dosing, Mixing and Transport of Dry Fine Powders

The handling of fine powders is an important task in modern production processes. However, as fine powders strongly tend to adhesion and agglomeration, their processing with conventional methods is difficult or impossible. Especially when processing small amounts of highly sensitive fine powders, conventional methods reach their technical limits. In process steps such as dosing, transport, and especially mixing of fine powders new methods are required. Apart from the well-known method of manipulating powder properties by adding chemical additives, this contribution aims at improving the handling of dry fine powders by using vibrations at different frequencies. Modules are presented, which enable the continuous dosing, the homogeneous mixing and the transport of dry fine powders. Finally, these modules are combined for the production of a homogeneous mixture of two dry fine powders.