Equipment whose function is to homogenize — combining streams, dispersing phases, keeping solids in suspension or promoting mass transfer by agitation.
Usual types (own families and handbooks in Phase 1):
- Tank agitators — axial impellers (propeller, hydrofoil) and radial impellers (Rushton turbine, flat blades), selected by flow regime and viscosity;
- Static mixers — fixed in-line elements, mixing at the cost of head loss (no moving parts);
- Dynamic in-line mixers — rotor-stator for fine dispersions;
- Homogenizers — high pressure/high shear for stable emulsions.
ISO 14224:2016 defines no dedicated class for mixing equipment — this group is a declared adaptation, supported by process-engineering practice (Handbook of Industrial Mixing). From a reliability standpoint, agitated machines share the rotating fundamentals of fluid machinery: sealing, bearings and unbalance dominate.