Silverson L5M-A High Shear Lab Mixer: From Lab Trial to Production in Indonesia
A formulation that performs well in a small laboratory beaker does not always behave the same way in a production tank. Powders that disperse easily at bench scale can leave lumps in a large batch, and an emulsion that looks stable in the lab can separate later.
Mixing is often one of the reasons, because the shear a product receives depends on the equipment as well as the batch size.
For manufacturers in Indonesia, this gap matters most at the development stage, when a lab mixer has to give a reliable indication of what production will do. This article looks at the Silverson L5M-A, how it works, and two real examples from Indonesian manufacturers.
What the L5M-A is
The L5M-A is a laboratory high shear mixer from Silverson’s Lab range. According to Silverson, the range covers capacities from 1 ml to 12 litres and offers more than 40 interchangeable workheads.
The difference from a conventional agitator is like stirring a drink with a spoon compared with putting it through a blender. A paddle moves the liquid around. A rotor/stator mixer pulls the batch into a workhead, drives it outward, forces it through the openings of the stator, and circulates it back through the same zone again.
A high shear mixer is built from a rotating rotor and a stationary stator with a small gap between them. A peer-reviewed review found that stator geometry strongly influences how uniform the resulting size distribution is (Vikash & Kumar, 2021).
A mixer chosen for the lab should tell you something reliable about production.
Silverson states that its lab mixers are engineered to the same precision standards as its larger production models, which is the basis for scale-up. The same review notes that no specific scale-up criterion is available for high shear mixers (Vikash & Kumar, 2021). In practice, this is why a trial on your own material tells you more than any general rule.
Examples from Jayapak Customers in Indonesia
Liquid fertiliser, Jakarta. A liquid fertiliser producer needed smaller particles in its product so that it could be applied through a sprayer. In the trial, the L5M-A reduced the particle size. The company then purchased the L5M-A for laboratory work, together with a pilot-scale model (DX).
Skin care and pharmaceuticals, Bandung. A manufacturer was dispersing active ingredients by conventional methods, which took a long time. Its liquid skin-care product still contained undispersed carbomer lumps after mixing. Carbomer is difficult to disperse because the outer layer of each clump can hydrate first, which slows water from reaching the dry powder inside.
The trial used a production-scale FMX25. The result was homogeneous, and mixing time was shorter because a separate straining step was no longer needed. The company purchased the FMX25. This trial ran on a production-scale unit, not the L5M-A. It is included because it shows the same type of dispersion problem at production scale.
Try it with your own material
The L5M-A is available for trial at Jayapak’s facility. Bring your own materials and see the result before deciding on equipment for production. To book a trial or discuss your application, contact the Jayapak Team:
Email: sales@jayapak.com
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/pt-jayapak-sinar-abadi
Website: www.jayapak.com
Reference
Vikash, V., & Kumar, V. (2021). Design and development of high shear mixers: Fundamentals, applications and recent progress. Chemical Engineering Science, 232, 116296
