Avaliação da qualidade de uma mistura com uso de microtracer

Abstract

The products for animal feed to be considered efficient in animal performance must have homogeneous appearance ensuring that each unit of the product has the same chemical composition. Thus, the quality tests of the mixing process must be performed to evaluate the mixing stage. The microtracers are iron particles covered with food dyes of various colors, does not present toxicity to the animal body, present easy detection to obtain results of mixing analysis. The objective with this work was to evaluate the mixing quality and the cross contamination of the horizontal mixer with the time of 60 seconds of operation in the production of mineral supplement. The work was carried out in the company Nutripura Nutrição Animal, Rondonópolis - MT. The samples were collected on September 11, 2018 and the evaluated product was a mineral supplement for beef cattle. The evaluation of mixing quality and cross-contamination was used as an indicator Microtracer F-Red. We collected 10 samples per beat from a total of 5 beats of the mineral supplement, the first 4 received the indicator and the last one was exempted from Microtracer F-Red. To evaluate the quality of the mixture, the coefficient of variation (CV%) and the recovery rate (TR%) of the indicator were used. Cross-contamination was assessed at the fifth strike by the proportion of indicator recovery. The use of MICROTRACER F-RED demonstrated that only in the first beat was the mixture homogeneous (CV% of 9.34 and TR% of 104.85). In beats 2 and 3, evaluating the CV%, it was found that the mixture was median and in beat 4, the mixture was not homogeneous. Concomitantly, according to TR% from beat 2, an inadequate mixture was observed. The mixing quality of the horizontal mixer with the time of 60 seconds of operation in the production of mineral supplement was not adequate. In this way, the mixing time should be increased, the wear and grounding of the mixer should be checked. Regarding cross contamination, the index of 1.90% indicates tolerable amount of residue after the mixer discharge.