How to find the right feeder?

The accurate dosing of powders, flakes or granules is a widespread operation in all types of process industries, and for various process applications such as feeding of mixers and reactors or filling of bags. The right selection ensures recipe consistency, automated production and prevents product rejects.

Gericke manufactures a broad range of feeders for use in applications in the raw materials, chemical, food and pharmaceutical industries. To find the most suitable feeder, a number of points have to be considered.

A precise dosing operation requires a high performance feeding unit, adapted to the rheology of each of the products to be dosed, capable of a very wide range of feed rates in order to deliver a high rate of flow to limit the duration of the operation but also a very low flow rate to adjust the flow to the required precision.

Often a weighing system is part of the dosing unit, depending on the size of the batches and the desired accuracy. Such gravimetric systems can work as “loss-in-weight” or “gain-in weight” feeders. Loss-in-weight is if used to provide a controlled flow of material (kg/h), gain-in-weight is most often used to provide a batch of material.

In the case of dosing very small loads where the tare of the dosing equipment may be much greater than the load to be weighed, it is advisable to use tare-compensated feeders. In such systems the weight of the feeding device and its hopper is compensated by a counterweight system. Thus, the entire weighing range of the load cells can be used to dose the product, allowing for best accuracy.

A feeder in an industrial process must be dust-tight. It is a matter of occupational health and safety, explosion protection and prevention of emissions. To achieve this, the flexible connections between the different elements must be designed to have a negligible impact on the load being weighed.

An effective breathing system for the complete assembly must also allow for balanced air flows, thus avoiding small pressure fluctuations that can have a significant impact on the actual weighing and thus on the actual accuracy.

Gericke feeders without metallic surfaces find a lot of interest in battery production.

About Gericke

The Swiss Gericke Group has been designing and manufacturing equipment and systems for modern bulk material processes, as well as providing design and consultation services, for more than 125 years. Gericke bulk materials processing technology can be found throughout the world in many sectors including the food, chemical, pharmaceutical, plastics and construction material industries.

Gericke’s fully owned group companies employ more than 300 experienced professionals and are located in Switzerland, Germany, Great Britain, The Netherlands, France, USA, Brazil, Singapore, Indonesia, Malaysia, Thailand and China.