From September 27^th to 29^th, 2022, Messer, the world’s largest family-run industrial gases specialist, will be showcasing its expertise in every aspect of cold grinding at Powtech in Nuremberg. At Stand 4A-509 in Hall 4A, the focus will be on the advantages of liquid nitrogen and carbon dioxide for cold grinding as well as on cryogenic equipment for product and mill cooling.

“Cold grinding with cryogenic liquid nitrogen or carbon dioxide allows particularly fine grain sizes and a high throughput of ground material to be achieved,” emphasizes Oliver Dietrich, a cold grinding expert at Messer. Other advantages of cold grinding include the fact that composite materials can be separated out into discrete components in a cost-effective and environmentally friendly way, and that high temperatures are avoided during cryogenic grinding of spices, so that aromas and flavors are fully preserved.

Special thermoplastics for 3D printing are also ideally suited to cryogenic grinding: the resulting powder has a defined particle size distribution of the kind needed, for example, in the SLS process. Another advantage of cold grinding with gases comes into play in the recycling of lithium batteries: the batteries first have to be crushed and broken down in a shredder; here the inert and cryogenic properties of the gases inhibit the extreme flammability of lithium and thus enhance safety in the recycling process.

At Messer’s Technical Center in Krefeld, Germany, anyone interested can test the possibilities and advantages of cryogenic grinding with regard to their individual production requirements. The entire facility is designed in such a way that allows the test results achieved to be transferred to large-scale production. In addition to the production of grinding samples as such, the facility also enables estimates to be made of production costs under manufacturing conditions and comparisons to be carried out with other grinding processes.