Optimization of Air Jet Mill

Under the guidance of:

Mr. Ajit Shrivastav
Plant Manager
Prasad Seeds Pvt. Ltd.

Submitted by:
Juturu Radheshyam (131FA02004)
Maddukuri Jagadeesh Babu (131FA02007)
Introduction :
Fine mineral particles ranging from 1m to 10m play an important role
as fillers in various industries such as plastics, paint, paper, sealant and
adhesives,cosmetics,detergent, ceramics, agriculture and pharmaceutical.
Normally fine mineral particles is produced through grinding process in
various energy intensive grinding mills such as ball mill, impact mills,
jet mill etc.
Fine grinding process is defined as production of fine particles in the
size range of several micrometers. Energy intensive mills are often used
for ultra fine grinding and mechanical activation purposes due to the
huge amount of energy delivered to the particles that were being ground.
Different types of mills used in industry are given below.
Mill class Mill type Product size range
Impact mills Pin mill 50-3000 microns
Hammer mill
Ball media mills Tumbling ball mill <50-3000 microns
Stirred media ball mill
Jet mills Loop (oval chamber) mill <50 microns
Fluidized-bed jet mill
Spiral jet mill
Roller mills Crushing roll >3000 microns

Jet Mills:
Jet Mills are used for micronizing of solids of agro-chemicals,
chemicals, pigments, minerals, pharmaceuticals, thermoplastics and
other like heat sensitive, corrosive and abrasive materials.
Jet mill has gain its importance in producing high purity fine particles
ranging from 1m to 10m since it was first invented in 1960. There are
two common types of jet mill which are the spiral jet mill and the
fluidized bed jet mill. The advantages of jet mill in producing fine
particles are high fineness combines with narrow size distribution, high
degree of dispersion, low grinding chamber temperature, no agitated
built in elements, high turbulence in the grinding chamber, which means
high heat transmission and high mass transfer with no product
contamination through wear.
Jet Mills operate in compressed air, gas or high pressure superheated
steam. These mills have no moving parts, thereby eliminating
contamination due to contact with external grinding media. No
attritional heat is generated during grinding making it the ideal process
to grind heat sensitive and waxy substance.
Although jet mill has several advantages but it is still an energy intensive
process as only 2% - 5% of the energy supplied is used to create new
surfaces. The development of more energy efficient fine grinding
process in jet mill implies a better fundamental understanding of the
various mechanisms involved in the fragmentation of the particles such
as grinding chamber pressure, amount of holdup in the grinding
chamber, particle shape, air flow in the grinding and classification
chamber besides the operational parameters and design parameters such
as, classifier speed, nozzle distance, feed rate and grinding pressure.

Application of Jet Mills in various industries:

Priciple of Operation:
Jet Mill works on fluid energy. Micronozing take place in a shallow,
cylindrical chamber. High pressure air or steam is injected in this
chamber through specially designed nozzles placed at regular distance,
on the peripheral wall. The axis of each jet is tangential to the
circumference of a smaller, imaginary, concentric circle.

Fig: Longitudinal section view of spiral jet mill.

During operation, these jets generate a high speed vortex inside the
chamber and the materials fed through a separate venturi system, which
creates a partial vaccum to suck the material into this high velocity
vortex. Strong velocity gradients near the jet cause the suspended
particles of the material to collide with each other and reduce themselves
by attrition and collision. The jet fluid exits through an outlet at the
centre of the chamber from top and draws the micronized particles with
it to the cyclone collector system. Heavier oversized particles are held in
the grinding chamber by centrifugal force, until micronized to a desired
size.
Advantages of Jet mill
Large surface area:
One of the most important characteristics of jet-milled product is the
huge increase in surface area. A 30 mesh screened product would have
particles as large as 595 microns in size and also much smaller. Jet
milling it down to five microns would be equivalent to using a
hypothetical 2500 mesh screen, which of course doesnt exist. Five
microns is equivalent to the size of bacteria cells. That five-micron
product has over 1.5 million more particles and over 100 times greater
surface area.
No Heat:
While several technologies exist to control or reduce particle size, most
are mechanical milling approaches, which impact heat to the milled
powder via conveyance of the material through spinning rotor and
fixed stator surfaces, which generate excess frictional energy and heat.
That heat is then retained within the grinding chamber surfaces, acting
as a heat sink. While the degree of heat rise imparted to the powder is a
function of the materials friability and the process milling parameters
utilized, the risk of heat related API degradation in increased. An
alternative technology often considered for milling (> 10 microns)
and/or micronization.

In jet milling, the milling energy is generated by supplying the grinding

chamber with compressed gas (typically compressed air or nitrogen)
through specifically designed and spatially orientated grinding nozzles
which provide the necessary velocity to accelerate the powder particles
to supersonic speeds within a tornado-like flow path inside the
grinding chamber. Continual particle-on-particle collision/attrition
occurs between neighboring particles during the material conveyance,
resulting in crystal fracture and particle size reduction to desired size
levels. The particle-on-particle collisions do create localized frictional
heat, but on a more limited scale relative to mechanical milling due to
the limited mass of the particles, the fluidized nature of the powder mass
within the mill, and the use of compressed gas as a conveyance and
milling medium. The use of compressed gas to create the particle
acceleration and attrition during grinding subsequently leads to an
instantaneous drop in pressure after the compressed gas is supplied
through the grinding nozzles and allowed to rapidly expand within the
grinding chamber to atmospheric pressure levels.

Particle Breakage Mechanism in Jet mill :

The breakage mechanism of particles in grinding mills is very much
dependent on its design and operating parameters. In jet mill, the main
breakage mechanism is destructive breakage due to impact and abrasion
due to attrition between particles. This phenomenon indicates that the
breakage mechanism of particles is influenced by the types of grinding
mechanism. High grinding pressure (therefore, a higher jet velocity and
greater grinding energy) leads to destructive breakage, therefore the
product will be less block-shape and platelets but exhibiting sharp edges.
If lower grinding pressure is used, abrasion grinding mechanism will be
more dominant resulting in chipping of the particle edges.
From the experiments its found that coarse particles broke due to
destructive breakage rather than abrasion and the probability of coarser
particles chosen for breakage was higher than smaller particles. In
general, smaller particles were more difficult to break than larger ones
because smaller particles contained fewer faults, flaws or discontinuities.
Abrasion breakage mechanism in jet mill is dependent on the
concentration or amount of particles in the grinding chamber. The
increase in the amount of fines and creation of new surface area when
the amount of holdup increases, is the characteristics of abrasion
breakage mechanism taking place in jetmill. Abrasion breakage
mechanism is characterized by formation of fines without noticeable
change in mean diameter of particles.
Operation Procedure of the jet mill in plant:
Here all the raw materials are blended and reduce the particle size to
make fine powder. The raw materials include Technical, surfactant,
additive, dye. Calculated amounts of all these are fed into a preblender
(ribbon blender) and allowed for blending about 15 minutes. After
blending the mixture is sent to an air jet mill operating at pressures of
9.1-9.7 Kg/cm2. An air stream at high pressure (10 Kg/cm 2) is used to
grind the material in the mill. The grinding is resulted due to the
attrition, impact mechanisms. The air is released into the mill at
tangential direction through nozzles. Here the air jet forms a vortex
which induces the turbulence in the air stream and increases the particle
collisions. The grinded particles overcome the centrifugal force and are
sucked by air blower. This air mixture is then enter into a cyclone
separator which separates the particulate material from the air. The
separated air is now allowed to pass through the dust collector for
further collection of particulate matter. The larger particles tend to move
towards the walls for grinding. The collected powder from cyclone
separator and the dust collector is blended again in a post blender. The
particle size of the material is reduced from 25 microns (feed size) to 6
microns (product). This product is weighed and stored batch wise and
the sample is sent to quality testing lab for analysis. Here the sample is
tested for particle size, composition, pH and some other parameters. The
batch feed rate is 200Kg/hr.

Parameters affecting fine grinding process in jet mill:

The design and operational parameters of fine grinding process in jet
mill affects the ground product in terms of its product fineness, particle
size distribution. The product fineness and its particle size distribution
are affected by feed rate, grinding air flow rate, height of classification
tube, angle of nozzles, types of grinding fluids, amount of holdup,
grinding pressure.
The parameters which affect the product fineness in a jet mill can be
classified as the geometrical parameters which is concerned with the
design of the mill and operational condition.

Geometrical parameter Operational condition

Diameter of grinding chamber Solid feed rate
Shape of nozzles Grinding pressure
Number of nozzles Classifier speed
Angle of nozzles Types of grinding fluids