The Analysis of Process of Crushing in the Vibrocavitational Homogenizer
Authors: Flisyuk E. V. , Belokurov S. S. , Narkevich I. A. , Flisyuk O. M. , Ivkin D. Yu. 
Published: November 2020

Introduction. Vibration cavitation homogenizers are increasingly used in various industries, including the pharmaceutical industry – for the preparation of creams, gels to give them a homogeneous composition, and more recently for the extraction of valuable substances from plant materials. As we have shown earlier, a comparison of the extraction of dioscin from fenugreek seeds, carried out in devices of various designs, under the same conditions for organizing the process showed that the most effective method was the extraction method in a vibro-cavitation field. Obviously, this is due to the fact that cavitation reduces the diffusion resistance of the process and, thus, increases the intensity of the process of transferring the mass of a substance from the solid phase to the solution. However, the extraction process in apparatus of this type is complex and is accompanied by crushing of seeds, which leads to a change in the dispersed composition of the solid phase.

Aim. Conduct a theoretical and experimental analysis of the process of grinding hay fenugreek seeds particles in a vibrocavitation homogenizer, accompanied by the extraction of biologically active substances, as well as obtaining dependences that allow evaluating the contribution of grinding to the formation of the dispersed composition of the meal in this apparatus and determining the average particle size as a result of crushing. In earlier works, using the example of the extraction of dioscin from fenugreek seeds, it was shown that an increase in the rotor speed increases the yield of biologically active substances. However, fine grinding of raw materials often leads to the formation of a sediment layer that pollutes the solution with ballast substances and complicates its purification, and also reduces the yield of biologically active substances, therefore, the study of this process is necessary to control the dispersed composition in order to ensure the highest extraction efficiency in devices of this type.

Materials and methods. The first stage of the study was the theoretical analysis of the grinding process, since it is a special case of a large class of processes in which the dispersed composition of the solid phase is not constant. Therefore, in this work, for the mathematical description of particle grinding, a model is used that takes into account the kinetic features of the process under consideration. An experimental study of the extraction of valuable components from plant raw materials was carried out in a laboratory setup with a vibro-cavitation homogenizer of periodic action. As a raw material, we used fenugreek seeds purchased from LLC «Stoing», Moscow (Russia), which we used for research. Commodity analysis showed the compliance of raw materials with the requirements of the GF XIV edition. The initial, aqueous solution of ethanol (volume concentration 60 %) with fenugreek seeds was loaded into glass 6, in a volume of 0.2 liters, then the rotor of the apparatus was brought into rotation and brought to a given rotation frequency. The experiments were carried out at a rotation frequency of 1000, 3000 and 5000 rpm (16.7; 50 and 83.3) 1/s. At each value of the rotor speed, the process time varied in the range from 0 to 50 minutes, and the process was carried out for 60, 120, 180, 240 and 300 seconds. Studies carried out for 5 minutes or more showed that the dispersed composition of the meal practically does not change over time, but significantly depends on the rotor speed. Thus, after 5 minutes, a certain stabilization of the dispersed composition occurs and further residence of the material in the apparatus does not lead to a noticeable change in the dispersed composition. After each experiment, the meal was taken, dried, and sieve analysis of the dispersed composition was carried out.

Results and discussion. Based on the results obtained by processing the experimental data according to the equation, the values of the average probability of particle crushing were calculated and, as it turned out, it practically does not depend on time, but depends only on the rotor speed. The dependence of the change in the average probability of particle grinding at different rotor speed was obtained. The analysis of these results showed that the value of the average probability of particle grinding in the cavitation homogenizer increases with an increase in the rotor speed, which is quite expected, since the frequency of contacts of particles with the working organs of the apparatus increases. In addition, the obtained dependence for the average probability of particle crushing is linear. This Expression quite accurately describes the values of the change in time of the relative mass of particles in the working range n = 16.7 – 83.3 1/s. Taking these values into account, the experimental and calculated results are in good agreement.

Conclusions. The proposed approach and the results obtained can be used to assess the dispersed composition of particles obtained in other designs of devices of similar action.