Liquid laundry detergents, fabric conditioners, hand dishwash liquids and many other everyday products have to be viscous – in the “right way”. Such products are often produced in high volumes in continuous production lines.
Today, production runs are often very short, as the factory has to deliver just-in-time for short-term fluctuations in product demand of a highly varied product range – this puts very high demand on controlling the continuous mixing to reach steady state in very short time.
If such a production run gets off track, large volumes have to be quarantined and later on mixed in with new material before it is ready for packing and shipping.
Conventional quality control can be based on frequently carrying samples to the QC lab, or the use of in-line viscometers. One solution is highly resource demanding – the other having the drawback of lack of temperature control of the sample (because it is measured inside the production line at whatever temperature is there) and often a lack of correlation to the QC methods (because the shear rate of the measurement is not carefully controlled).
Fluidan and Henkel has entered into an agreement to test RheoStream® in manufacture of household care liquids. The trial will take place in the lead factory in Vienna, Austria.
After carefully reviewing the specifications and requirements, Fluidan will install a RheoStream instrument, and during the following weeks of operation we will assess the quality of the data and the suitability of the method for production control.
