Silverson Machines mixing capabilities with honey

While there are many designs of agitators and stirrer/scrapers capable of handling high viscosity products, the low shear nature of agitators limits their effectiveness to performing simple tasks such as blending liquids of like viscosities and maintaining in-tank uniformity.

Silverson Machines have specially designed high shear rotor/stator mixers which are ideal for high viscosity applications, as demonstrated in a newly released ‘how to’ video, highlighting Silverson’s mixing capabilities with honey.

Honey can be extremely difficult to process due to its viscous and ‘sticky’ characteristics. Using conventional mixing equipment it would be almost impossible to uniformly incorporate additional ingredients such as spices, seasoning and cocoa powder into the mixture or to refine honey which has crystalised, even with lengthy processing times and extensive energy input.

Silverson’s specially developed High Viscosity In-Line mixer has a unique and innovative ‘pumping rotor’ design which provides increased capacity. It is the specially designed pumping rotor within the precision-machined workhead that forces liquid and solids into the rotor/stator assembly and ensures that the flow rate of the mixer is maintained. Material is forced out through the holes in the stator and pumped back to the vessel as fresh material is drawn into the workhead, creating a circulatory pattern of mixing in which the entire contents of the vessel passes through the workhead. The positive mixing of a Silverson mixer ensures that all ingredients are uniformly dispersed throughout the product, so no isolated mixing occurs. And the self-pumping action can handle the recirculation without additional pumping equipment being required.

This avoids the problem of stratification and faster processing reduces the risk of unintentional temperature rise caused by long mixing times.

Silverson Machines has recently helped a customer who wanted to improve the quality of their honey products but was struggling to get the results they wanted using an agitator.

The company, based in the UAE, manufacturers many different kinds of natural honey, cold pressed oils for food and other herbal supplements and natural products.

Previously, they had been using conventional agitators for blending their natural honey products, but this was time consuming with high costs resulting from running the mixers for extended periods of time to achieve their desired product. They also wanted to experiment with improving their products by adding powders, such as Ginseng powder and bee pollen, as well as other high viscosity products like fresh royal jelly. With their agitator, this was proving to be impossible as it could not incorporate the additional ingredients.

Part of the problem with incorporating these powders into the viscous honey was their low density. The company was adding 10 – 15% of powder to the honey and found that it did not disperse correctly using the conventional agitator, as it did not produce sufficient shear to break down any agglomerates that formed. As a result, the company could not get a final product with the required specifications and was having issues with wastage which further increased costs.

After contacting Silverson, the company decided to trial one of the L5M-A laboratory mixers to see if it could help solve their mixing problems. Whilst trialling the lab mixer, they found it was able to completely disperse the low density powders, creating an agglomerate-free, homogeneous mixture with excellent taste and distinctive texture.

A Silverson mixer is able to combine to products of varying viscosity due to the positive mixing action created by the rotor/stator workhead. The company now describe their product as being incomparable to any other on the market because of the quality produced with the Silverson mixer.

Watch the Silverson ‘How to’ video on Honey: https://youtu.be/AGaPQUi6mjE

Or contact Silverson via their website or sales@silverson.co.uk to arrange a trial.