Magnetic Agitators: The New Generation

    GRAZ, AUSTRIA, April 25, 2015 /24-7PressRelease/ -- ZETA Biopharma, the Austrian maker of liquid process equipment, announces a new BMRT magnetic agitator with greatly improved run-dry performance.

ZETA, the company based near Graz, Austria, has supplied over 2000 of its magnetic agitators to more than 150 companies around the world. The customers are mostly in the pharmaceutical and biotech sectors, and also in the food industry, in Europe, Asia, Africa, and the Americas. "Even in this highly specialized sector, continuous improvement is the key to long-term success," says Reinhard Heber, head of the department 'Products and Components' at ZETA.

Stirring down to the last drop
Product manager Andreas Diel explains the background, "In our new BMRT agitators, we have used new magnetic materials that became available recently. The stronger magnetic field enabled us to create a new solution for the critical situation where you want to empty the vessel while keeping the agitator running."

In the new design, some of the magnetic force is now used to lift the impeller. This reduces friction in the impeller's ceramic bearing. In the older models, the impeller settles down on the bearing when the vessel is empty. This led to abrasion of the bearing, with increased release of particles into the liquid, and sometimes even failure of the bearing. Andreas Diel: "With the new model, you can keep stirring right down to the last drop." Importantly, the BMRT agitator achieves this greatly improved run-dry capability without introducing any new bearing materials or coatings, thus completely avoiding the possibility of new abrasion problems.

Powerful mixing
The classic rotor designs used the motion of the impeller in the liquid to create lift, reducing friction with the bearing. Since the impeller now rides on the magnetic field, the lifting function of the impeller blades is no longer needed and the shape of the blades can be optimised for mixing. "Instead of the old, angled blades, we can now use nearly-vertical blades, which we have designed by computational fluid dynamics to achieve a shorter mixing time with the same energy input," explains Andreas Diel. The new magnetic material also makes it possible to transmit a higher torque to the impeller. This means that an agitator of the same size as before can mix a significantly larger volume of liquid.

ZETA emphasises that it is not changing the popular BMR range of agitators. However, as department head Reinhard Heber concludes, "We think that with the run-dry capability, the use of the more powerful magnets and the shorter mixing time, the new ZETA-BMRT agitators will turn out to have decisive advantages for many clients."

About ZETA:
The ZETA Group, with headquarters in Lieboch, near Graz, Austria is a specialist in development, manufacturing and automation of made-to-measure process equipment for sterile and aseptic liquid processes for the pharmaceutical and food industries. The ZETA Group employs a total of 320 people and has factories and offices in five countries.
http://www.zeta.com

Further information and pictures are available online at:
http://en.zeta.com/index.php?seitenId=147
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