How do you keep sticky liquids (like ketchup) from, well, sticking to stuff? It is a common problem if you enjoy having a burger and fries – turning the ketchup bottle upside down and pounding on the bottom until you finally get to squirt it out on the plate. Or, maybe you are a shaker instead of a tapper, or have drowned your food in steak sauce that suddenly decided to leave the bottle. A new innovation called LiquiGlide aims to change the way we use our sticky foods.
The concept is fairly simple. Liquid-impregnated surface technology keeps liquids from sticking by filling in all the microscopic nooks and crannies to create a barrier between the liquid and the wall of the bottle or tube. In fact, the two never actually touch. Liquiglide reduces washdowns between batches and captures more of the actual product in the batch. Less water also means less waste. Liquiglide, Inc. plans on taking its concept from the bottle to the manufacturer, hoping to revolutionize the manufacturing process by going to the source of creation – the tanks.
However, for manufacturers struggling with clogged pipes, washdown procedures that are expensive or time consuming or other issues viscous liquids create, modernizing the mixer will provide a long term solution as well as improving consistency. Buildup on tanks and in mixers requires constant cleaning, chemicals and hot water at high impact, not to mention the down time from soaking and scrubbing. Less wasted water, of which the manufacturing industry produces quite a bit, means cost savings as well. But you don’t have to coat your equipment to get the same effects.
A modern static mixer such as Komax’s innovative designs have no moving parts, which means fewer reasons to have to deal with gunk on the equipment or downtime due to clogging. Electropolished mixers with proportionate pumps mean energy savings as well as product consistency. The only thing “sticky” for your business should be your profits!