Laboratory for innovation in dispersion and mixing for the structuration of food and non food systems – MIXILAB

This joint laboratory project "MIXI-LAB" refers to VMI company (Vendée Mécanique Industrie) and ONIRIS-UMR CNRS 6144 GEPEA. It aims at developing innovative solutions for dispersion / mixing. VMI is a major player in the mixing industry while UMR GEPEA (A + AERES / 2011) has a process engineering experience. Mixing and structuring based on liquid and solid ingredients systems (powders), poses particular problems found in food, pharmaceutical, cosmetics, etc. A mixer consists of a container (reactor) and one or more tools that will set motion and contact between solid, liquid &gas. The design of the reactor & tool is often based on experience combined with an intuitive approach. Different physicochemical constraints are involved such as shear, elongation, the solid-solid and solid-liquid affinities, solubilization of solids, chemical reactions .... The energy and viscous dissipation results from tool-reactor-products interactions. In this traditional industry, the use of sensors is minimal and is often limited to global data (energy), offline sensors, or based on at the discretion of the operator.

MIXI-LAB aims at:
1) Establishment of a scientific approach based on physical models for optimizing and scaling up continuous and batch mixers. This development will be supported by a database (combining models and data from tests) that will be implemented and enriched by the experimental data collected on test protocols with models and real products. The final goal is to store the knowledge and develop extrapolation tools to strengthen VMI’s development and expertise.
2) Development of a sensor offer. The objective is to improve supervision, optimize the energy provided in function accurate data determining the degree of completion of a dispersion-mixture operation. Various technologies and approach should allow on-line control (continuous systems) and batch operation ("software-sensor" approach).
3) The development of a background study on the interaction between reactor headspace & material undergoing mixing. This approach will focus i) on the consumption of certain gases (oxygen, other) in order to control the gas intake during mixing, ii) the development of breakthrough technologies to the introduction of minor ingredients (improvers, fillers, plasticizers ...) and iii) on innovative ways of incorporating liquid phases. The incorporation strategy for minor ingredients is to be solved especially for continuous mixers.
4) Optimization and extrapolation of the reactor / tool with two targets; for batch systems by adopting multi tool techniques to better control the shear and for continuous mixer to better understand the involved phenomena and develop a range of continuous mixer with extrusion-expansion capabilities. In the long term, it is envisaged to develop continuous mixer adapted to food and non food application to be implemented in co-extrusion systems for mastering 2D-3D matrices and the 3D printer technology type.

Two application areas are targeted: bakery (M1 to M36) & non-food (cosmetics, biotech…) after the first 36 months. The major challenge for VMI is to switch to a scientific approach for equipment design, to successfully bridge the evolution towards continuous systems and to develop a sensor-based process supervision.