Particulate Process and Product Design: A Pharmaceutical Mixture Case Study

Granular/particulate materials are common in our everyday lives, and their processing consumes ~10% of the world’s energy.  Despite their extensive use as well as economic and environmental impacts, far fewer engineering and design principles exist for particulates than for their liquid and gas counterparts.  Many industries, including pharmaceuticals, food, agricultural chemicals, detergents, catalysts, and consumer products, manufacture a variety of products from particulate materials.  Product or intermediate specifications may include size, size distribution, shape, strength, porosity, and content uniformity of particles or of particulate-based delivery forms.  The aim of this work is to design particulate products and processes through the study of fundamental phenomena involved in particle-particle, particle-fluid, and particle-equipment interactions to produce required product specifications.  By working backwards from the desired end product attributes, this multiscale design approach covers the entire sequence of raw feed formulation handling through equipment processing to the final granular product.  This talk will highlight a pharmaceutical mixture case study involving particulate process and product design.