Development of new methods to accelerate and improve the agglomeration of submicron particles by binding liquids

Often, the agglomeration of submicron particles by adding binding liquids in a classical way can be very slow and uncontrolled. Here, two methods are developed for accelerating and controlling these kinds of processes. In the case of the first method, the immiscible binding liquid is added in the form of a very fine emulsion preliminarily prepared by a mechanical dispersion using a rotor–stator mixer. The second method is totally innovative; the binding liquid is directly generated within the suspension by a chemical reaction. Both methods are applied to the agglomeration of an organic pigment radically improving the process.