Plant and Equipment
Introduction
British Rema has over 75 years of knowledge and experience in the design, fabrication and installation of particle size reduction and control equipment, from pilot plant through to large industrial-scale projects. Our equipment can be found anywhere in the world and in the most demanding of environments, in applications ranging from pharmaceutical manufacturing, through food, cosmetics and fine chemical plants, to the most rugged of mineral processing environments.
Our engineers can provide a turnkey design, project management and plant installation service or, alternatively, we can simply supply a single, cost-effective piece of equipment ready to plug in and go. All of this is supported by our own mobile engineers along with a full spares and refurbishment service.
Our selection guide, and the product overviews below, are designed to guide you towards the right type of equipment for your needs. To discuss your specific application please contact david.bugler@britishrema.com or by telephone on +44(0)1246 269955.
Size Reduction Equipment - Overview
British Rema offers a range of size reduction mills and micronisers capable of manufacturing to the most demanding particle size and size-distribution specifications.
Air micronisers (or “jet mills”) are applied to the superfine grinding of a wide range of materials, particularly where the feed material is already relatively fine. The technique relies on particle-on-particle impact to break down the material. There are two types of mill: (i) a spiral flow jet mill is appropriate for grinding softer materials and is commonly used in pharmaceutical applications due to the absence of any moving parts; (ii) an opposed jet mill can handle harder materials with classification achieved by means of a high speed rotor.
Rotary impact mills, also known as beater mills or hammer mills, employ high-speed rotors with a rotor tip velocity of up to 120 m/s. Grinding takes place through the impact of the powder particles on the rotating grinding surfaces. Typically used for materials of up to 3 Mohs hardness, an impact mill provides a operationally cost-effective solution when hardness and particle size parameters fall within its range. British Rema also offers a classifier mill: based on the beater mill principle, the “CLM” range incorporates two-stage grinding with an integrated classification step. This recycling of oversize material enables finer particle sizes to be achieved than with a conventional, simple impact mill.
Ball mills, and other forms of tumbling mills such as tube mills and rod mills, comprise a cylindrical shell slowly rotating around a horizontal axis, partially filled with a grinding medium (such as ceramic or stainless steel balls) to which the material to be milled is introduced. Typical in the ores, minerals, paints and general chemicals industries, ball mills can be designed to operate continuously (fed at one end and discharged at the other), or on a batch basis for smaller, or intermittent, volume requirements.
Size Control Equipment - Overview
British Rema offers a range of classifiers, all based on air classification technologies, under which dry powders of mixed particle size are separated into two distinct fractions, one above and one below a definite cut point. This is achieved by exploiting the differential forces acting upon particles of different size and mass within an air flow system. Different techniques can be required to achieve this depending on the material and particle sizes involved.
The “Aerosplit” range comprises high efficiency, air-swept classifiers for ultrafine powders. Operating in the 3 to 100 micron range, Aerosplit classifiers are capable of handling quantities from a few kilos to many tonnes per hour.
The British Rema Unit Air Separators are gravity-fed, forced vortex classifiers and are the most economic classifiers in terms of energy consumption. As well as being a high performance classifier in the range of 25 to 300 microns, they are particularly suitable for the removal of small quantities of oversize material or the de-dusting of granular materials to remove undesirable “fines”.
The “Minisplit” classification system has been developed for research and small-scale production applications and incorporates a feeder, classifier and product collection system. Operating in the range of 1 to 75 microns and with feed rates of between 1 and 75 kilos per hour, it can also be supplied with interchangeable components enabling it to be converted to a small opposed jet mill system complete with integral classifier.
British Rema’s static vane classifiers are suitable for coarse classification, generally operating in the range of 50 to 300 microns, and are typically used in ball mill based systems.
In addition to air classifiers, British Rema can also supply a range of sieves and sifters through its sister company, Powder Technology Limited.
