Sciencemadness Discussion Board

Granulation of glass and fine abrasive powder

ReaktionChamber - 7-11-2019 at 02:37

Hey guys,

I ran in some trouble with my current project. The given task is to improve the flowability of very fine powder. Therefore, I was given a very fine glass powder (~5µm) and an abrasive powder (silicon carbide, ~15µm) and my goal was to granulate these two into a powder with a fine share as little as possible.

I have tried several methods, of which most are based on Heatgranulation.

My ideas are the following:

-sol-gel process via sodium silicate (reaction with the glass?!)

-Heatgranulation with an organic binder (which is burned after the granulation)

-Creating a very hard solid mass and crushing it down to the right size

Do you guys have any idea on how to granulate the given powders (without using industrial-sized apparatus like freeze-drying or spray drying)

Thank you in advance :)

draculic acid69 - 7-11-2019 at 04:28

Ball mill. Blender

elementcollector1 - 7-11-2019 at 14:07

Definitely a job for a ball mill. Cheap and easy way to do it is a rock tumbler and some steel slingshot ammo (or other steel spheres).

wg48temp9 - 8-11-2019 at 00:26

If by granulation you mean to form the mixture in to +millimeter sized chunks you could use the method used by amiture gun powder makers:

The mixture with binder is forced thru a perforated zinc sheet. When dry its shaken or tumbled briefly to break up loosely sticking granulations then sieved to obtain the correctly sized granulation. The dust and large bits are recycled back in to the next batch. There is probably a youtube video demonstrating the method.

The method is useful for pelletizing almost anything provided a suitable binder is available.

Think about how a meat grinder works, some extrude and cut.


Praxichys - 11-11-2019 at 07:02

For more info, that process was known as corning.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gunpowder#Corning