CSIRO rheometer to be trialled in industry

Industry trials are about to get under way for a CSIRO fully-automated, inline rheometer to be used in the production of paints and inks, and foods such as sauces and edible oils.

The technology is a major advance on the current Micro Fourier Rheometer (MFR) developed by CSIRO and now manufactured and distributed by GBC Scientific.

Printing ink manufacturer Coates Australia is expected to trial the instrument within the next few months to determine its effectiveness for inline production.

CSIRO is eliminating the difficulty of working with such delicate instrumentation found in the original version by making it much more robust through a re-design of the instrument body.

As CSIRO researcher Dr Robin Smith explains, "Manufacturers will be able to work with large-flowing volumes of process fluid through the rheometer. The present instrument has been designed to fit a 12 cm diameter flange, considered the ideal size for industrial applications."

Coates Australia's Manager - Web Division, Australia and New Zealand, Carl Pagano, is keep to test the rheometer.

"We'll need to make sure there's a correlation between the results of the new rheometer and the results from our tired and true testing methods," Pagano explains.

The new inline rheometer continues to use the Micro Fourier Rheometer principle with a squeeze flow geometry. By performing Fourier transforms on both the impressed displacement signal and the measured force signal, the visco-elastic properties of the fluid can be accurately calculated in a time of four seconds or less.

Measurement over the complete frequency range in such a short time is important in a flow situation so that changes in the process flow rheological properties can be quickly detected and corrected for. This should lead to considerable savings of time and money in an industrial situation.

Another advantage is that the body of the machine is made of stainless steel, which allows for the use of effective industrial cleaning agents.