In short: To benchmark a carrier silica against SIPERNAT® 22, load both with the same liquid at the same ratio and compare four things: how much liquid the powder takes before it stops flowing, how the premix flows and doses on your equipment, whether it cakes after weeks in the bag, and whether the active survives storage. Absorption capacity on paper is not the number that decides it.
Carrier silica is bought on one number more often than any other additive: how much liquid a kilogram of powder can absorb. It is the wrong number to buy on, for a simple reason. The ceiling — the point at which the powder finally turns into paste — is not the point at which the powder is still useful.
What you actually need is the working load: the amount of liquid the carrier can hold and still flow through your hopper, dose accurately on your equipment, and not release oil back onto the bag over the next three months. That figure is always below the ceiling, and how far below depends on your liquid, your equipment and your climate — not on the carrier alone.
Two carriers with the same headline absorption can have very different working loads. The one that holds the liquid inside its pore structure rather than on its surface will keep flowing closer to its ceiling. That is what the trial finds out, and no data sheet can tell you.
Use your own liquid, not a test oil. Vitamin E acetate, a choline solution, a flavour, an enzyme carrier and a mould inhibitor all behave differently on the same silica, and a result generated with one of them does not transfer to another.
Load incumbent and candidate at the same liquid-to-carrier ratio, using the same mixer, the same addition rate and the same mixing time. Addition rate matters more than people expect: pouring the liquid in fast gives you lumps whichever carrier you use, and that is not a property of the carrier.
Run a second, higher ratio alongside. If the candidate holds at a ratio where the incumbent starts to clump, you have found headroom — which usually translates to less carrier per tonne of premix, and that is where the commercial case sits.
Working load, not ceiling. Step the ratio up until the powder stops behaving like a powder — until it balls up, sticks to the mixer wall, or stops pouring cleanly. Record the last ratio at which it was still free-flowing. That is the number to compare, and it is specific to your liquid.
Flow and dosing on your equipment. Not an angle-of-repose measurement in a laboratory — the actual hopper, feeder and blender the premix goes through. Watch for bridging in the hopper, for dosing drift on the feeder, and for segregation in the blender. A carrier that flows on the bench and bridges in the plant has failed.
Caking after storage. Bag both premixes and leave them stacked, at ambient and at an elevated temperature and humidity that reflects where the product actually goes. Check at intervals out to at least a month: does the bag set solid, does a crust form at the surface, does the powder still pour? This is the failure people discover at the customer.
Active stability. The carrier is not inert with respect to time. Send samples of both premixes for assay after storage and compare the loss. A carrier that holds more liquid but costs you more active over three months is not the cheaper option.
Our starting point for premix carrier work is CENSIL 260P, with CENSIL 265P and CENSIL 280P beside it so the set covers a range of absorption and flow behaviour rather than a single point. CENSIL 260P also runs as a food anti-caking aid and an agrochemical WP/WG carrier, so the same material often covers more than one line in the same plant.
Customers commonly benchmark carrier silica against products such as Evonik SIPERNAT® 22 and SIPERNAT® 50 S. Naming them tells you where a grade sits; it is not a claim of equivalence, and the fit is established by your own loading trial and storage check.
Send at least two candidates. If the first one lands close on working load but bridges in your hopper, the useful next move is along the gradient — not a different supplier.
Four rows, three columns: incumbent, candidate A, candidate B. Working load at your liquid, flow and dosing behaviour, caking after one month at ambient and elevated, assay loss over the same period. Two ratios each.
If the candidate matches on all four, you have a second source for a material that sits in the middle of every premix you make. If it holds a higher working load without losing flow, you have a cost case as well — and that case is made in kilograms of carrier per tonne, not in price per kilogram.
We will tell you which of our carrier grades customers most often put on the bench against it, send a sample set with a loading and storage test plan, and read the results with you. We do not claim equivalence — that would be a claim about your liquid and your equipment, which we have not tested.
The honest answer is that the ceiling is not the useful number and it changes with the liquid. What we can do is send the current-revision technical data sheet with the test method behind each figure, and help you find the working load on your own liquid.
Feed-grade material comes from FAMI-QS certified production. For food and other uses we confirm the destination-country position per enquiry rather than making a blanket claim, because requirements differ by market and by use.
At least a month, at ambient and at an elevated temperature and humidity matching the destination. Caking and assay loss are both time-dependent, and both are discovered at the customer if you skip this step.
Third-party product and brand names are the trademarks of their respective owners and are used here only to identify the reference points customers benchmark against. No equivalence, affiliation or endorsement is claimed or implied.
The material you use now, the formulation or resin, the equipment and the target you need to hit. That is enough for us to say whether we have something worth testing.
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