Several companies overcome segregation concerns by capturing the blend constituents within a granule but granulation is not possible or desirable in many cases. For breakfast cereals, some people prefer to pick the raisons out of the cereal. More and more pharmaceutical companies rely on direct compression of blended materials, where product uniformity is critical. The answer lies in IBC blending followed by mass flow discharge. The next challenge is to discharge the IBC contents without allowing segregation to occur - this requires 'mass flow'.
Mass flow means that all of the mass of a dry blend moves uniformally out of the container.
In an automated system this is only possible with a properly designed gravity flow system. The Matcon cone valve provides guaranteed mass flow and eliminates segregation at the point of discharge. The action of the valve is to repeatedly lift gently into the product, then lower and seal, allowing relatively small 'pulses' of product to be gravity fed to process below. As the material 'falls', all blended constituents discharge at the same rate and mass flow results.