Soap processing plants

CONTINUOUS SAPONIFICATION PLANTS

VACUUM DRYERS

More than 1.000 vacuum dryers have been successfully installed all over the world with plant capacities from 1 to 15 tph. The revolutionary “NO SPRAY” Vacuum Chamber was introduced during 2005: more than 100 units are in operation since then granting important production savings with simplified equipment design.

Soap finishing lines

A new generation of finishing lines to match the demand of manufacturing speeds from 100 to 1.400 bpm for small, medium, high and ultra high production with the best efficiencies.

The market demands to achieve the highest speeds, important energy and space savings, minimal manpower intervention and quickest line’s set ups: thanks to its continuous R&D program supported by a team of 40 engineers, Mazzoni LB offers several innovative solutions to respond to the most sophisticated exigencies for quality soap bars making.

• High efficiency Batch and Continuous Mixers/Amalgamators
• New Plodders generation for capacities up to 15 tph
• “Clean Design” hydraulic roll-mills
• “Mechatronic” Electronic Cutters in single and duplo configuration
• New concept soap presses with/without direct transfer system to packaging machines with stamping capacity up to 1.000 bars per minute
• “MRP” Multi-refining Plodder, a single machine suitable to substitute a roll-mill (or duplex refiner) and a duplex vacuum plodder of a conventional finishing line with consequent energy, space, maintenance savings.

Flowpack

A wide range of flowpacks with special application to soap handling is available to satisfy the most sophisticated packaging exigencies.

The two basic machines are AVAILABLE respectively for speeds up to 250 and 500 bpm.

Integrated end of line including STUR Presses with “DTS” Direct Transfer System and MLB-500 Flow-pack for the direct and synchronized discharge of the soap tablets into the pocketed belt of the Flow-pack. The max. speed of the integrated line is 500 bpm. The Flow-pack infeed pocketed chain is extended into the frame of the Press, under the DTS system allowing fastest production speeds together with top quality packaging.

Syndet Soap

A wide range of dedicated technologies to produce laundry and toilet syndet & combo bars:

• syndet laundry bars
• syndet toilet bars
• combo toilet bars

Syndet laundry bars manufacture requires heavy duty mixers/amalgamators for active matter neutralization and fillers additivation, special roll mills with hardened and ground stainless steel lined cylinders, twin-worm extruders with stainless steel special profile screws. Special design extruders with air incorporation are available for low density laundry bars manufacture.

Syndet and combo toilet soap lines including slurry cooling and hardening chilled rolls, heavy duty amalgamators with extraction worms, special design duplex refiners and duplex vacuum ploders designed for high pressure operations (60-80bar), soap presses equipped with high conductivity alloys for dies, sophisticated temperature and pressure controls and regulating devices are available fro capacities up to 5/6.000 kg/h.

Detergents spray drying tower

Spray-drying plant for the production of detergent powders of low and medium density, covering the full range of commercial formulations including a post addition of thermosensible components, up to powder packaging.

The slurry is pumped to a spray nozzles circuit installed in the upper part of the spray tower.

The size and number of nozzles depends on the plant capacity and required product granulometry.

The spray is generally of the hollow cone type and nozzle size generally varies in diameter from 3 to 5 mm with a spray angle in a range of  50-70°.

In the spray tower the special design of the hot air distribution chamber allows operation with high differential temperatures i.e.: hot air inlet temperature up to 400-450°C, exhaust air outlet temperature down to 85-90°C with consequent optimum thermal efficiency.

The optimization of the design of hot-air inlet ducts and the design and positioning of slurry distribution nozzles result in overall improvement of the drying path through the Spray-Tower.

This fact, together with the increase of solid matter content in the slurry and the increase of hot-air temperature, results in increased evaporation efficiency of the Spray-Tower.

All the operating conditions are automatically adjusted by setting the proper parameters of fuel feeding, air flow, slurry concentration and all pressures/temperatures at the required optimum value, for controlled heat and mass balance of the process.

The characteristics of the powder beads are largely determined by direction, velocity and temperature of the hot air stream.

The hot air is generated in furnaces purposely designed to obtain smokeless combustion.

The most commonly available fuels (ranging from natural gas to heavy fuel oils), can be utilized without causing inconveniences nor affecting the whiteness of the finished products.

The hot air is conveyed to the lower part of the spraying tower. Two fans, determining the pressure conditions of the air circuit, are installed for regulation of the air-flow passing through the tower. By means of this circuit the hot air is conveyed via a special distribution ring located at the bottom and from there up to the top of the tower coming into contact countercurrently with the slurry spray falling down from the top.

Liquid Detergents

The liquid form for household detergents is gaining market share in many world markets particularly for dish washing and light-duty applications. Moreover, the personal care products in liquid form have a substantial share of the market and can be manufactured in the same plants as liquid detergents.

For this reason, whenever reference is made here in after to liquid detergents, it is meant to refer also to personal care products.

Independently on the type of liquid detergents or personal care products and their specific targeted uses, the manufacturing of liquid detergents should be based on processes, equipment and operation sequences in compliance with the chemical and physical demands of these products.

The formulated liquid detergent, where the various components have to be "incorporated", has to be stable. This target is accomplished when all the formulation components are properly selected and their introduction into the product recipe is such as to avoid a strong variation to temperature, pH and viscosity, as well as undesired chemical reactions.

In other words, the manufacturing of liquid detergents requires high care in constituting stable and strong “micelles” distributed into the liquid product. This is commonly perceived as "product homogeneity".

Surfactants

Desmet Ballestra’s SULPHUREX film sulphonation technology presents outstanding advantages over the competing processes, namely:

• superior performance in terms of product quality, especially when sensitive raw materials are processed
• exceptionally good conversion rate and colour with maximum achievable absorption of SO3 gas
• simpler construction which entails easier maintenance
• lower operating pressure
• no extra cooling requirements and nor the need of chilling water equipment
• extra low energy consumption

Desmet Ballestra has implemented  the world’s largest sulphonation plants (24.000 Kg/h as 100% active surfactant) and is constantly optimizing its process through the continuous work of its R&D Centre. Particularly it has developed proprietary Know-How and processes for surfactant upgrading downstream the sulphonation process, i.e.: Dioxane stripping and Drying process for pure dry surfactant production.

Desmet Ballestra can offer standard plant design for capacities ranging from 1 to 8 ton/hr and customized design for larger capacities.

Listed below are the main features of the process sections of a Desmet Ballestra SULPHUREX plant