NEW YORK—Smooth, an emulsions producer, will be exhibiting at HBA Global—June 28 to 30, 2011, at the Javits Center in New York. Smooth’s product line, which includes new larger-scale “cradle" and “cabinet" devices, enables applications ranging from lab-scale experiments to pilot plants to full commercial production of hundreds of liters per minute of superior emulsified products. The company also offers engineering and on-site support, including a 24-hour service to specify pumps and other equipment, and on-site analysts who work with customers to set-up quickly and successfully operate emulsification systems.
“At HBA Global, we look forward to connecting with top beauty and personal-care formulators and product development teams seeking the latest innovations in emulsification technology," said Mark Grace of Smooth. Information about this new emulsion technology and associated services, as well as Smooth hardware will be on display at Booth 1257.
Emulsions and formulated products can be found nearly everywhere, including personal care and cosmetics. However, despite their ubiquity, many desired formulations have not made it to the market because of the limitations of traditional mixing equipment. Traditionally, emulsions are made with high-speed mixers, which have poor control and often over-shear fragile ingredients. This leads to over-designing compositions and processing conditions to ensure product requirements are met, as well as the overuse of chemical surfactants. Smooth operating in a continuous, instead of batch, fashion and adding droplets into the continuous phase through an engineered dispersion plate. The result is very uniform and stable emulsions, often without the need for surfactants.
Smooth lab-scale and pilot devices, which produce up to 5 L/minute, have been available for more than a year. The new “cradle" product places five Smooth pilot devices in parallel and can produce up to 25 L/ minute, while a “cabinet" is essentially multiple parallel cradles and can produce hundreds of liters per minute of uniform emulsified products. Product engineers are encouraged to experiment with lab and pilot devices to determine the optimal configuration and process parameters to produce the desired formulation. The critical variables determined in these tests are then built into cradle and cabinet production scale units to make efficient products.