The influence of dry-blending operational parameters

on homogeneity of milk formula powder
N.S.M. Dali1, N.A. Bakar2, N.A. Aziz1,a, Y.A. Yusof1 and F.S. Taip1
1Department of Process and Food Process Engineering, Faculty of Engineering, UPM, Malaysia; 2Department of
Food Technology, Politeknik Sultan Haji Ahmad Shah, Malaysia.

Abstract
Powdered milk formula is generally manufactured using dry blending/mixing
process to homogeneously mix the powdered ingredients, especially in low rate self-
sufficient milk producing countries. Mixing can be influenced by several factors:
particle size, rotation speed, equipment configuration, mixing volume, mixing angle
and the cohesiveness of the material. In this project, the effects of operational
parameters and feed preparation in a convective batch ribbon powder mixer are
investigated. Whole milk powder, skimmed milk powder, whey protein 45%,
maltodextrin, lactose, zinc oxide and ascorbic acid powders were used for the mixing
study and the formulation was based on standard infant formula in the market. Four
typical infant formulae are prepared. Operational parameters of the mixer are filling
level (60, 80 and 100%) and mixing time (5, 10, 15, 20 and 25 min). Chemical tests
were done to ensure that the nutrients are uniformly distributed throughout the
mixing batch. The results have shown that the mixing time is affected by the filling
level. A better mixing can be obtained at lower filling level (60% for 10-15 min mixing
time). Besides, the results also showedthat powders with smaller particle size
(skimmed milk powder, 75.02 μm), cohesive particle and round particle surface
produced a better mixing performance. Thus, findings from this work can significantly
contribute in comprehending the mixing process, the effects of the raw materials
characteristics and furthermore in developing efficient mixing.

Keywords: dry blending, cow milk powder, infant formula, convective mixing

INTRODUCTION
Fresh cow milk and human milk are very important sources of protein for the human
diet. It is also a primary nutrient source for newborn babies and infants. Generally, fresh cow
milk is used to substitute human milk as it contains water, complete macronutrients such as
fats, carbohydrates and proteins as well as micronutrients including vitamins and minerals
(Committee on the Evaluation of the Addition of Ingredients New to Infant Formula, Food
and Nutrition Board, 2004). Fresh cow milk is normally processed to prolong its shelf life
and it is produced in two forms which are in liquid form and powder form. Milk powder is
the most convenient milk product as it is convenient in applications during transportation,
handling, processing, and for product formulations.
Milk powder is manufactured using two general types of processes: a dry blending
process and a wet mixing. Dry-blending process is a typical operation applied by milk
powder manufacturers in low rate self-sufficient milk producing countries. Dry ingredients
are blended in a convective mixer (i.e., ribbon blender or tumble blender) to obtain
uniformed nutrients distribution throughout the batch. It is a great challenge to achieve the
best mixing procedure in the industry. This is because there are a few factors contributing to
the homogeneity of the milk powders during the mixing process, which are powder
properties, equipment design, processing conditions, and operator methodology (Williams,
1968; Halidan et al., 2016). Deveswaran et al. (2009) describes the sequential approaches to
ensure a stable and quality powder product can be obtained. Many factors can affect their
mixing homogeneity and most of the literatures have investigated only selected factors.
a
E-mail: [email protected]

  Acta Hortic. 1152. ISHS 2017. DOI 10.17660/ActaHortic.2017.1152.54 399

Proc. III International Conference on Agricultural and Food Engineering
 
Eds.: S. Khairunniza Bejo et al.
Portillo et al. (2009) uses statistical approach to investigate the effect of rotation rate, mixing
angle, and cohesion in two continuous powder mixers. Cô té and Abatzoglou (2006) for
example, reported the mixer filling height as the most important operational parameter in
comparison with mixing time and impeller rotational speed.
The present study investigated the effects of feed preparation characteristic (pre-
blending) and operational parameters (filling level and mixing time) on mixing homogeneity
in a convective batch ribbon mixer. Whole milk powder, skimmed milk powder, whey protein
45%, maltodextrin, lactose, zinc oxide and ascorbic acid powders were used for the mixing
study and the formulation was based on standard infant formula in the market. Due to the
different characteristics of the powders, it was assumed the mixture was heterogeneous.

MATERIALS AND METHODS

Blending equipment
The convective batch ribbon mixer used in this study was designed for a laboratory
study (unpublished). This mixer is classified as a convective mixer and is comprised of a U-
shaped container (length 30 cm, height 12 cm, width10 cm) that houses a horizontal ribbon
mixer (length40 cm, diameter 9 cm) with a double layer of spiralblades (Figure 1). This
scaled-down mixer is made from poly(methyl methacrylate) and the blade and shaft are
made from stainless steel. A motor (RW20; IKA GmbH, Kö nigswinter, Germany) is used to
provide rotational movement to the shaft. The rotational speeds range from 10 to 200 rpm.
The powders are fed into and removed from the mixer through the detachable hinged top.

Figure 1. Photographs of the batch ribbon mixer. (A) The complete mixer and; (B) a close-
up of U-shaped container.

Blend formulation
The raw materials used in this work are basically the simplified formulation of infant
formula and this formulation is used as the model mixture (Lesniewicz et al., 2010; Hanley et
al., 2011). Two model blends are used in this study. Whole milk powder (WMP) blend
consists of fat source (whole milk powder), protein source (whey protein 45%),
polysaccharide (maltodextrin), carbohydrate source (lactose), mineral source (zinc oxide)
and vitamin source (ascorbic acid). Whereas, skimmed milk powder (SMP) blend consists of,
skimmed milk powder, whey protein 45%, maltodextrin, lactose, zinc oxide and ascorbic
acid. The list of raw materials and their descriptions is provided in Table 1. All raw materials
are stored in dry and cool condition storage. This is to avoid the raw materials from
agglomeration due to the formation of liquid bridges in powder bed. The ideal condition to
store the raw materials is in temperature 21°C and relative humidity of 20-35%. Table 2
shows the properties of the ingredients. Figure 2 provides a scanning electron microscope
micrograph of the ingredients.

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Table 1. Raw material description.
Raw Description
materials
Whole milk • Manufactured by Friesland Campina Group
powder • Contains 30% milk fat, 26% protein, 4285 IU 100 g-1 vitamin A, 600 IU 100 g-1 vitamin D3, 0.25%
lecithin, 3.0% free fat
• Free from preservatives, chemical additives, foreign matter, and other impurities
• Yellow powder, slightly sweet
Skimmed • Manufactured by Friesland Campina Group
milk • Contains 1.2% fat, 41.1% protein, 55.4% lactose
powder • Contains 5% or less moisture (by weight) and 1.5% or less milk fat (by weight)
• Yellow powder, slightly sweet
Whey protein • Manufactured by Friesland Campina Group
45% • Contains 4% fat, 47% protein, 3.5% ash, 0.3% calcium, 0.05% magnesium, 1.0% potassium, 0.3%
sodium, 0.09% chloride, 1.0% phosphate
• Yellow powder, slightly sweet
Maltodextrin • Manufactured by Epic Chemicals Sdn. Bhd
• Carbohydrate composition – 2% glucose, 7% disaccharides, 91% higher polysaccharides
• Mineral composition – 50 ppm sodium, 50 ppm chloride, 10 ppm calcium, 10 ppm potassium
• A polysaccharide (complex) carbohydrate
• White powder, neutral, slightly sweet
Lactose • Manufactured by Friesland Campina Group
• Contains 0.3% protein, 0.4% ash
• White/almost white, crystalline powder freely but slowly soluble in water
Zinc oxide • Manufactured by Approfit Zinc Oxide SdnBhd, Malaysia
• White crystalline powder
Ascorbic acid • Manufactured by Northern General Pharmaceutical Factory, China
• White/almost white, crystalline powder

Table 2. Properties of the ingredients.

Whole Skimmed Whey
Zinc Ascorbic
Properties milk milk protein Maltodextrin Lactose
oxide acid
powder powder 45%
Mean particle 167 75 57 106 83 7 126
size (μm)
Poured density 0.47 0.49 0.34 0.52 0.38 0.58 0.85
(g mL-1)
Tapped density 0.51 0.59 0.49 0.55 0.42 0.8 1.08
(g mL-1)
Hausner ratio 1.09 1.2 1.44 1.06 1.11 1.38 1.27
Carr’s index (%) 1.09 16.95 30.61 5.45 9.52 27.5 21.3
Flowability Excellent Fair Poor Excellent Excellent Poor Passable
(Carr’s index as
reference)
Moisture content 2.87 3.19 2.38 2.83 0.35 0.4 0.23
(%)
Morphology Spherical Spherical Spherical Irregular Irregular Crystal structure Irregular –
shape shape shape – hexagonal nearly
and cubic monoclinic
crystal structure

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 A B C

D E F

Figure 2. Scanning electron microscope micrographs: (A) whole milk powderat a
magnification of 1500×; (B) skimmed milk powder at a magnification of 1500×;
(C) whey protein 45% at a magnification of 1500×; (D) maltodextrin at a
magnification of 15000×; (E) lactose at a magnification of 1500×; (F) ascorbic acid
at a magnification of 50×, (G) zinc oxide at a magnification of 100000×.

Feed preparation and mixing procedure

The feeds are prepared with (1) pre-blending or (2) without pre-blending. The pre-
blend mixture consisting of 0.7 g ascorbic acid, 0.06 g inc oxide and 167 g lactose was
manually mixed. This mixture was then combined with 300 g of whole milk powder, 117 g of
whey protein 45% and 417 g of maltodextrin in the ribbon mixer at the 100% filling level.
The powders were mixed according to the simplified formulation of infant formula and were
used as the mixture model throughout this study. The mixer was set to run at 100 rpm
before the samples were collected at 5, 10, 15, 20 and 25 min time intervals. The experiment
was then repeated by substituting the whole milk powder with 300 g of skimmed milk
powder and also repeated at 80 and 60% filling level. Filling levels were selected according
to the ribbon height, where at 60% the filling level matches the shaft of the ribbon, 80% is
when the filling level reaches three-quarter of the blade height and 100% when filling level
reaches the height of the outer blade. For feed preparation 2 (without pre-blending), all the
ingredients were fed intothe mixer simultaneously. Mixing parameters employed in this
study are described in Table 3. After the mixing process, 100 g sample was collected at every
twelve points within the mixer (Figure 3) to ensure thorough characterization by
considering areas that may have different shear conditions. The selection of sampling
positions was based on Muzzio et al. (2003). Three samples were withdrawn from each
point. A core sampling technique was applied for obtaining three-dimensional sampling as it
allows a cross-sectional sample to be taken from each sample location.

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Table 3. Mixing parameters.
Parameters Description
Filling level (%) 100, 80, 60
Mixer run time (minutes) 5, 10, 15, 20, 25
Blade speed (rpm) 100
Feed preparation Preblend and without preblend

1 1
8 11
5
4

3 7
6
9
12
2

Figure 3. Upper view of sampling position.

Homogeneity measurement
In this project, the effects of different mixing parameters on the homogeneityof the
output stream were determined by analyzing the output samples as a function of time. To
analyze homogeneity, it is necessary to determine the amount of tracer (ascorbic acid) in the
sample using chemical testing techniques. The mixture was tested by titrating the dissolved
sample with redox-indicator solution, 2,6-diclorophenolindophenol (AOAC Method 967.21).
Prior to this, a standard was prepared to compare homogeneity. The amount of vitamin C
content in 1000 g mixture was 0.0679%. Therefore, 0.0679% vitamin C content was set as
the standard specification. This indicates that every sample withdrawn from the mixture
should meet this specification in order to be considered as a homogeneous batch. Due to the
process deviations such as parallax error and human error, the standard specification of
0.0679% was allowed a tolerance of ±10%; which gives a range of minimum vitamin C
content 0.0611% to a maximum of 0.0747%. Every sample was given a ±10% to meet the
standard specification of vitamin C content. If any sample was found to be within this range,
it will be categorized as meets the specification. For the samples that do not meet this
specification, it will be defined as non-homogeneous.

RESULTS AND DISCUSSIONS

Figure 4 shows vitamin C contents in the mixture (a) at filling level 100%, (b) at filling
level 80% and (c) at filling level 60%. At 60% filling level, the samples show a trend of
increase in homogeneity. The result shows that an increase in the mixing time produces a
more homogenous mixture. From Figure 4a, the pre-blended whole milk powder trend had a
higher tendency to meet the specification for all the different parameters. It was also found
that the specification was achieved after 10 min of mixing. The powder particle size also
affected the mixing performance. The whole milk powder which has big particle size was
found to have better mixing performance in a shorter time due to its excellent flowability
during the mixing process. In addition, longer mixing time resulted in a more homogeneous
mixture for high filling level powder bed.
Figure 4b represents the mixing result at a medium filling level of 80%. This graph
shows a similar trend as the previous graph, but the mixture of skimmed milk powder with
pre-blend achieved homogeneity in a short mixing time (15 min). Figure 4c shows powder

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mixing at filling level 60%. It illustrates vigorous changes on the mixture and trends in a
short period. All types of mixture meet the specification after 10 min of mixing, but after that
some mixtures seem to experience a downturn. It is suspected that the powder experience
segregation in the powder mixture. Larger powder particles move upward to the surface of
the mixture thus producing a non-homogenous mixture.

Figure 4. Vitamin C content in the mixture after (a) mixing level at 100%, (b) mixing level at
80%, (c) mixing level at 60%.
Similar trends are obtained for every filling level, where it shows that the pre-blended
whole milk powder mixtures were more likely to meet the specification. After 10 min
mixing, it has fulfilled the minimum homogeneity requirement. These results shows that the
mixing characteristics of pre-blended whole milk powder will obtain better homogeneity as
whole milk powder has big vacuoles with small particles that can be entrapped in its porous

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structure (as shown in Figure 2). Furthermore, its excellent flowability and the influence of
unprotected fat on particles of whole milk powder, particularly fat free content, forms
cohesive strength which can also affect the quality of the mixture (Sharma et al., 2012).
Whole milk powder is classified as cohesive powder that will promote segregation.
However, the inter-particle forces are high enough to overcome the vibration forces. The
cohesion characteristic of whole milk powder may also contribute to the homogeneity of the
mixture. The sticky surface area and coarser surface of whole milk powder have promoted
binding effect for other particle size.
Figures 5 and 6 shows the vitamin C contents at different filling level performance. At
lower filling level (60%), shorter time is needed to produce a homogeneous mixture.
However, if mixing with lower filling level is handled for a long period (25 min), the powder
will tend to segregate accordingly. During segregation the bigger particle size will move
upward and form a separation layer between different size particles.

Figure 5. Vitamin C content in the mixture after mixing with pre-blend for (a) whole milk
powder, (b) skimmed milk powder, at various filling levels.

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Figure 6. Vitamin C content in the mixture after mixing without pre-blend for (a) whole
milk powder, (b) skimmed milk powder, at various levels.

CONCLUSIONS
The following conclusions can be drawn from the study:
- It was found that mixtures containing whole milk powder with pre-blending always
meet the specification with the shortest mixing time.
- These results illustrate that the whole milk powder which has big particle size
conducted with a pre-blending technique application improves the mixing process in
a convective batch ribbon powder mixer.
- The characteristics of whole milk powder which is comprised of big particle size,
porous structure and outermost surface covered by unprotected fat promotes
agglomeration of the different particles within the mixture.
- However, prolonged periods of high-speed mixing will lead to mixture segregation.
- This phenomenon could be seen for skimmed milk powder at 80% filling level
without pre-blending.
- Thus an understanding of powder characteristics and behaviours is essential to
control the mixing efficiency.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
The support of the Ministry of Higher Learning Malaysiathrough FRGS grant
(5524379) is acknowledged.

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