S&L's Strategies: Enhancing Mixing Efficiency in Instant Coffee Production

Mixing equipment finds extensive applications across diverse industries dealing with powder materials, including fine chemicals, food, life sciences, animal feeding, pesticides, dyes, and building materials. The pivotal first step is to choose an appropriate mixer. Indeed, a well-thought-out process design and effective electrical control can remarkably enhance production efficiency and elevate the quality of the final product. To illustrate how to improve mixing production efficiency, let's take a three-in-one coffee factory as an example.

In today's market, instant coffee has gained significant popularity among consumers due to its remarkable convenience. It allows people to brew and enjoy it anytime and anywhere. Instant coffee can be transformed into various flavors, such as latte, cappuccino, and mocha, by adjusting different recipe ratios. The key to these distinct flavors lies in the precise mixing ratios of the ingredients.

Conveying Process

Given the unique characteristics of coffee, to safeguard the flavor of coffee powder during the conveying process, a pipe chain conveyor is typically employed. This choice is not only because it minimizes the damage to the coffee's flavor but also because it helps save factory space, enabling a more compact installation layout.

Raw Material Preparation

The instant coffee production line involves more than ten different raw material formulas. Initially, each raw material needs to be accurately weighed and stored. Then, the specified quantity of each raw material is precisely added to the mixer through a weighing sensor and a dosing system. An appropriately sized silo, along with an efficient weighing and feeding system, can effectively assist customers in conserving raw materials and shortening the feeding time. The addition of each formula can be precisely controlled by a PLC program, ensuring the accuracy of the added materials and enabling traceability.

Mixing Process

For instant coffee production, two types of mixers are suitable: the double-shaft paddle mixer WZ and the horizontal ribbon mixer WLDH. The double-shaft paddle mixer is capable of achieving an excellent mixing effect in the shortest possible time. However, in comparison to the horizontal ribbon mixer, it presents challenges in achieving a thorough cleaning. To address this issue, S&L has developed a retractable double-shaft paddle mixer, which greatly facilitates daily deep cleaning. The horizontal ribbon mixer WLDH offers a relatively gentle mixing action. Although its mixing speed is slower than that of the WZ mixer, it consumes less energy and is easier to clean. Generally speaking, both mixing devices can be utilized for instant coffee mixing. Nevertheless, when it comes to mixing efficiency, the double-shaft paddle mixer WZ stands out as more efficient and has become the preferred choice for mixing instant coffee.

Packaging

Typically, customers opt for a vertical combination scale packaging system for instant coffee packaging. This is because the multi-head combination scale is more suitable for pouch packaging, offering a faster and more accurate packaging speed. The machine can automatically carry out all the packaging processes, including product counting, filling into bags, inflating or exhausting, date printing, and counting.