Automating ceramics blending

Euroelettra Sistemi

, an Italian developer of ceramics production equipment, has used Emerson Process Management’s Micro Motion Coriolis technology to help with the design of a skid-mounted blending system for ceramic slip and colouring materials.

The new skid systems enable batches of the ceramic raw materials to be blended at the time of use, compared to the traditional approach of mixing and maintaining mass quantities for use over extended periods.

Conventional production of coloured ceramics involved preparation and blending of the base suspension or slip, and the colour, in quantities of tens of tons at a time. Repeated colour analysis and colour addition ensured that once the colour had reached the desired level, enough material was available for a reasonable production quantity to be modelled and fired, achieving a consistent result.

Typically the blending occurred in ball mills, and then in underground agitation tanks, which required significant amounts of energy to maintain the agitation, over the days while the material was being used in the modelling process. Inevitably the large tanks and mills required a lot of cleaning, thereby wasting the material that was deposited on the tank walls and associated pipework. High quality products required dedicated tanks to avoid impurity carry-over from previous batches.