August 25, 2026
Inside RITEKS' New Powder Blending Facility, Engineered by MIXSYS
Since 1989, RITEKS has grown into a specialty chemical provider supplying high-performance products to industries like oil and gas, construction, and coatings. As demand for those products increased, RITEKS needed to expand its technical and manufacturing capabilities to keep up.
That expansion led to a new state-of-the-art powder blending manufacturing facility in Houston, Texas.
Safety Had to Come First
Powder blending with combustible materials isn't a place to cut corners. RITEKS partnered closely with MIXSYS to design a system that was accurate and efficient, but the priority was safety for its operators.
The entire system was engineered and designed based on a dust hazard analysis, with guidance from a leading NFPA professional. The result is a facility capable of safely handling highly combustible powders from the moment raw material arrives to the moment product ships.
From Raw Material to Barcoded Tote
Before any material reaches the mixer, it passes through RITEKS' lab. Once the quality control team approves a raw material, it moves to the production floor.
Raw materials arrive in a few different forms — bulk bags, super sacks, or palletized bags in 50 lb, 25 lb, or bag-in-box formats. Those materials are dispensed into a transloader that fills hermetically sealed totes for use downstream.
The entire stackup, from hoist to valves to solenoids, is certified Class II Division 2, meaning every component is rated to handle combustible dust. As totes are filled, each one receives a barcoded sticker tied to that specific raw material, setting up the traceability that carries through the rest of the process.
A Smart, Loss-in-Weight Dosing System
Once raw materials are staged in MIXSYS's adaptable modular tote system, each ingredient sits in its own labeled, barcoded tote. Operators use a handheld scanner to scan each tote and confirm its position in the production area, while a PLC-driven system and HMI control the batch from there.
The dosing system runs on a loss-in-weight concept. Each Smart Ingredient Station sits on four load cells that continuously measure the material inside its tote. A stack light on each station alerts operators when a raw material is running low, so a full tote can be swapped in without slowing the batch down.
From there, ingredients drop from the tote into a screw conveyor, which doses material into a tubular chain conveyor feeding the mixer. The entire pathway, tote to mixer to packaging line, stays fully enclosed to mitigate dust hazards while keeping dosing accurate.
For RITEKS, that accuracy matters whether the batch is an internal formulation or a recipe for a toll blending customer. A hand-add station also gives operators the ability to introduce specialty materials in smaller doses, so even the most demanding formulations stay on spec.
Mixing Built for Fast, Even Dispersion
Accurate dosing only solves half the equation. The other half happens inside the mixer.
RITEKS' system uses a cylindrical mixing vessel with plowshare-based mixing tools, rather than the U-shaped trough found in many ribbon blenders. As the plow heads spin, they create a three-dimensional vortex that throws product into the air. The cylindrical shape then automatically entrains that material back into the mixing dynamic, driving fast, thorough particle dispersion.
Most batches spend two to five minutes in the mixing chamber before they're ready to discharge. An automated sample port lets operators pull an in-process sample at any point during the batch with the push of a button, so quality control can evaluate the blend without interrupting production.
Flexible Packaging for Every Order Size
Once a blend is ready, it drops into a surge hopper positioned directly above the packaging line.
Two auger fillers currently package product into 50 lb bags. Each filled bag moves through a bag flattener that conditions it for printing lot numbers and other information RITEKS can customize for toll packing or internal use, keeping lot traceability intact from raw material to finished good.
For larger orders, the system also fills bulk bags up to 2,000 lb through a dedicated screw conveyor. An automated pallet dispenser stages a pallet under the bulk bag filler using optical sensors and conveyors, and the screw conveyor runs until the bag hits its target weight. Once filled, the bag is released, conveyed for offloading, and shrink-wrapped before it heads out to the plant floor.
Engineered to Contain Combustible Dust
Handling combustible powders at this scale requires more than good dosing and mixing. RITEKS' dust collection system is rated to handle materials with a Kst up to 250, and it does more than manage nuisance dust.
Two components inside the dust collector are built specifically to prevent incidents from reaching operators or equipment. An isolation, or non-return, valve stops a pressure wave or flame front from traveling back into the facility. At the collector itself, a suppression canister can inject a chemical suppressant in a matter of milliseconds to stop a pressure wave or flammable event before it develops.
A Process Built End to End
RITEKS' new Houston facility isn't a single piece of equipment doing one job well. It's a connected system, from raw material intake through dosing, mixing, packaging, and dust safety, engineered to work as one process.
That's the approach MIXSYS brings to every project: understanding how materials behave and how each stage of a process supports the next, then building a system around it.
Ready to build a safer, more accurate process?
See how MIXSYS designs combustible-dust-rated material handling and process technology systems built around your operation.