High-Shear Mixers for Pet Food Manufacturing

Pet food manufacturing requires reliable high-shear mixing equipment to prepare homogeneous mixtures of various ingredients. Ultrasonic mixers provide ultras-high shear forces that can process highly viscous slurries and doughs. Furthermore, ultrasonic mixers are used to produce stable nano-emulsions and to extract active ingredients from raw materials. Ultrasonication helps you to make better, more nutritious and shelf-stable pet food whilst being economical and easy-to-use.

Pet Food Production

The product range in pet foods is rapidly developing as it caters to the growing demand of pet owners who want only the best for their four-legged partners. Whilst in the past pet food was mainly a pelletized or canned meat-based chow, today‘s pet food section covers all kinds of varieties including special designed pet foods for pets at different life stages, activity levels as well as with special requirements.
The selection of high-quality pet foods includes dry kibble, wet foods, semi-moist foods, dried concentrates, fortified pet food, broths, milks, treats etc. with non-GMO, gluten-free, no preservatives, clean-label or organic varieties. Supplements are specifically engineered for animals to meet their special requirements of vitamins, minerals, antioxidants and amino acids.
Today’s pet food not only has to be nutritionally balanced, so that the animals’ nutritional needs are met by the ingredients of the formulation. Pet food also must respond to the pet owners’ expectations which include olfactoriaely / aesthetically appealing, ethically-sourced, environmental-friendly, organic or clean-label quality fulfilling.
Typical ingredients include meats (e.g., beef, poultry, sheep, goat, fish), eggs, vegetables, legumes, grains, cereals, vitamins, minerals, and antioxidants. Ultrasonic high-shear mixer provide the required mixing energy to process various ingredients into a slurry or dough, which can be extruded in downstream processing into kibbles.
Read more about ultrasonic high-shear mixers!
Ultrasonic mixers are also used to emulsify water and oil phases into stable nano-emulsions. Ultrasonic nano-emulsions are used to encapsulate bioactive substances such as vitamins, minerals and antioxidants in order to obtain superior bioavailability. As a non-thermal processing technology, ultrasonic mixing and emulsification does not degrade temperature-sensitive compounds by heat.
Read more about the formulation of supplements using ultrasonication!

Ultrasonic High-Shear Mixing of Pet Food

Ultrasonic high-shear mixers are widely used in various industries to produce foods & beverages, pharmaceuticals, therapeutics, nutritional supplements and (phyto-)chemicals. Ultrasonic high-shear mixers can be implemented at various stages of pet food and pet supplement production in order to improve the processing and the product.
Use Ultrasonic Mixers For

• Thorough Wetting of Powders
• Homogeneous Blending
• Nano-Emulsification
• Flavour Extraction

How Does Ultrasonic High-Shear Mixing Work?

Ultrasonic high-shear mixers use the same mechanical principle as other commonly used industrial mixing equipment, e.g. high-shear blade mixers, multi-shaft mixers, colloid mills, high-pressure homogenizers, and blade agitators. Ultrasonic high-shear processors are frequently used as reliable and robust mixers to disperse and mill particles, to emulsify oil and water phases, to wet and solubilize powders as well as to produce homogeneous slurries, doughs or pastes. Ultrasonic high-shear mixers transmit the very intense shear forces via an ultrasonic probe (also known as sonotrode) into a mixing container, such as into a batch tank or into a flow cell reactor. The probe of the ultrasonic mixer vibrates in the liquid at a very high frequency and amplitudes thereby creating intense ultrasonic cavitation bubbles in the medium. The collapse of the cavitation bubbles results in powerful shear forces, that disrupt and break droplets, agglomerates, aggregates, and even primary particles. As ultrasonic cavitation generates high-velocity cavitational streaming with up to 1000km/h, the cavitational liquid streams accelerate particles. When the accelerated particles collide with each other, the act as milling media. As a consequence, the colliding particles shatter and are are reduced to micron- or nano-size. In the ultrasonic cavitation field, pressures alternate quickly and repeatedly between vacuum and up to 1000bar. A rotary mixer with 4 mixer blades would need to operate at a staggering 300,000 RPM to achieve the same frequency of alternating pressure cycles. Conventional rotary mixers and rotor-stator mixers create no significant amount of cavitation because of their limitation in speed. The intense cavitation forces make ultrasonic high-shear processors the ideal equipment for demanding mixing applications.

Why Ultrasonic High-Shear Processors for Pet Food Production?

Highly efficient, reliable, robust and available at any size, Hielscher Ultrasonics‘ high-shear mixer are the solution for your mixing application. Ultrasonic high-shear mixers can be installed as batch mixers / tank agitators or as continuous flow-through systems for the inline processing. All Hielscher Ultrasonics’ high-shear mixers are manufactured from high-quality stainless steel and titanium. They are used in FDA-approved processing facilities in food & beverage, dairy, meat, poultry, pharmaceutical, and cosmetic production.

Why Ultrasonic High-Shear Mixers?

• Uniform Mixing
• Non-Thermal Processing
• For Batch or Inline
• No problems with high solid concentrations
• No nozzles / no clogging
• No milling medium (i.e. beads) required
• Food-Grade
• CIP / SIP
• Safe and Easy to Operate
• Low Maintenance
• Linear Scalability

The Advantages of High-Performance Ultrasonic Mixers

Ultrasonic high shear mixers create intense shear forces, which have the required impact on particles such as solids, droplets, crystals, and fibres in order to break them down to a targeted size, which can be micron or nano size. The particle size reducing effect can be precisely adjusted via tuning of the ultrasonic intensity.
Easily handling high viscosities and high solid loads, ultrasonic high-shear inline mixers are ideal to process paste- or dough-like products such as pet food formulations before extrusion. The acoustic shear forces achieve a thorough wetting of the powder ingredients and blend them uniformly into a homogeneous mixture.
Depending on the particles hardness, the ultrasonic process parameters can be exactly adjusted to achieve the aspired mixing result. When compared to alternative mixing methods such as high-shear blade agitators, high-pressure homogenizers, colloid / bead mills, shaft mixers etc. ultrasonic high-shear mixers offer major advantages such as the problem-free handling of abrasives and high solid loadings, the lack of clogged nozzles, the easy and safe operation, low maintenance and robustness.
For water/oil emulsions, ultrasonication is the superior method to produce stable nano-emulsions. Ultrasonic emulsification is also used to encapsulate bioactive compounds such as vitamins and antioxidants into highly bioavailable liposomes.

Batch and Inline

Hielscher Ultrasonics high-performance mixers can be used for batch and continuous flow-through processing. Depending on your process volume and hourly throughput, inline processing might be recommended. Whilst batching is time- and labour-intensive, a continuous inline mixing process is more efficient, faster and requires significantly less labour.

Ultrasonic Mixers for Every Product Capacity

Hielscher Ultrasonics product range covers the full spectrum of ultrasonic processors from compact lab ultrasonicators over bench-top and pilot systems to fully-industrial ultrasonic processors with the capacity to process truckloads per hour. The full product range allows us to offer you the most suitable ultrasonic shear mixer for your process capacity and goals.
Ultrasonic benchtop systems are ideal to formulate new pet food recipes, to experiment with new flavour compositions or to design pet supplements. Linear scale-up based on established process parameters makes it very easy to increase the processing capacities from smaller lots to fully commercial production. Up-scaling can be done by either installing a more powerful ultrasonic mixer unit or clustering several ultrasonicators in parallel. With the UIP16000 (16kW), Hielscher offers the most powerful ultrasonic high-shear mixer worldwide.

High Amplitudes for High Mixing Efficiency

Hielscher Ultrasonics’ industrial ultrasonic processors can deliver very high amplitudes and deliver the required mixing intensity for demanding applications. Amplitudes of up to 200µm can be easily continuously run in 24/7 operation. For even higher amplitudes, customized ultrasonic sonotrodes are available. The robustness of Hielscher’s ultrasonic equipment allows for 24/7 operation at heavy duty and in demanding environments. This makes Hielscher’s mixing equipment a reliable work tool that fulfils your mixing and blending requirements.

Easy, Risk-free Testing

Ultrasonic processes can be completely linear scaled. This means every result that you have achieved using a lab or bench-top ultrasonicator, can be scaled to exactly the same output using the exactly same process parameters. This makes ultrasonication ideal for product development and subsequent implementation into commercial manufacturing.

Highest Quality – Designed and Manufactured in Germany

As a family-owned and family-run business, Hielscher prioritizes highest quality standards for its ultrasonic processors. All ultrasonicators are designed, manufactured and thoroughly tested in our headquarter in Teltow near Berlin, Germany. Robustness and reliability of Hielscher’s ultrasonic equipment make it a work horse in your production. 24/7 operation under full load and in demanding environments is a natural characteristic of Hielscher’s high-performance mixers.

You can buy Hielscher ultrasonic high-shear mixers in any different size and exactly configured to your process requirements. From treating fluids in a small lab beaker to the continuous flow-through mixing of slurries and pastes on industrial level, Hielscher Ultrasonics offers a suitable high-shear mixer for you! Please contact us – we are glad to recommend you the ideal ultrasonic mixer setup!

The table below gives you an indication of the approximate processing capacity of our ultrasonicators: