INTENSIFICATION OF THE PROCESS OF MIXING FEED MIXTURES

The quality and reliability of the technological process of preparing feed mixtures has a significant role both on the properties of the manufactured product and on the productivity of animals. The use of standard mixer designs, as a rule, does not ensure the quality of mixtures, economy, efficiency and leads to an increase in energy costs for the implementation of the technological process. Despite the presence of a wide variety in mixer designs, the need for new mixer developments remains an urgent problem associated with the constant increase in requirements for the uniformity of feed mixtures. When preparing combined feeds of own production, the degree of uniformity should be 90...95%. The study of the mixing process was carried out for a two-shaft bladed mixer of continuous operation. During the research, three variants of the operation of the paddle mixer were considered, differing from each other in the number and size of the blades. The greatest intensity of mixing was in a mixer with smaller blades, but at the same time the segregation period was more than 50%. In all variants, 30...50% of the time is spent on convective mixing. High-quality mixing will be ensured by increasing the number of force impacts of the blades in the elementary mixing zones, which determine the total length of the continuous mixer. A new theoretical dependence of the mixing kinetics in a continuous-action paddle mixer is obtained. The formula shows that increasing the uniformity of the finished feed mixture can be achieved by controlling the mixing process and improving the working bodies of mixers. The efficiency of the mixing process is ensured first by creating a preliminary value of the homogeneity of the mixture Θ0, outside the mixing chamber, and then by varying the mixer parameters to ensure the required quality of the feed mixture. The obtained dependence is the basis for a new method of gravitational mixing and a device for its implementation.