(422a) Development of a Resonant Acoustic Mixing Methodology for Particle Size Reduction

Particle size reduction plays an important role in various manufacturing industries, such as the chemical, pharmaceutical, and food and beverage industries. Decreasing particle size can be very beneficial for a process; materials can see an increased dissolution rate, an increased rate of reaction, a more-effective drug delivery, and a more consistent appearance and texture, among other things. Without these improved characteristics, many manufacturing processes would not succeed.

 

Nalas routinely operates a LabRAM resonant acoustic mixer to efficiently mix powder systems and to explore green methods of preparing different solid state products. We have developed a dry grinding method for the LabRAM that minimizes the time needed for particle size reduction and removes the need to suspend solids in a solvent typically employed in wet methods. This method has been found to be particularly suited to very dense solids and solids that tend to agglomerate upon reducing the particle size.

 

The development and reproducibility of this new methodology will be discussed as well as the impact of the grinding container size, milling media amount, amount of material to be milled, milling time, and the force of milling on the final particle size distribution. Finally, the method will be compared to existing milling methods, such as ball-milling and high-shear wet milling.