(69f) Linking Particle Properties to Powder Performance in the Process Plant

The Virtual Formulation Laboratory (VFL) proposes a practical tool of simulating interactions between components, resulting in information on the flow behaviour of particulate materials. Product desired performance within certain formulation specifications requires developing products that present right particle properties during the manufacturing processes and also when consumers use them. The manufacturing processes for these products present challenges that lead to delays in the path to productivity and increased development costs.

Building a knowledge database from existing components and fine-tuning the relationships based on physical properties (related to morphology and/or intrinsic properties) should allow prediction of behaviour in manufacturing scenarios and guide technology choice at an early stage.

This study investigates the relationship between particle-scale interactions dominated by the cohesive van der Waals force and the flow function. We developed a tool for prediction and optimisation of manufacturability of advanced solids-based formulations which will be used by industries allowing to quickly and accurately measure the flow properties of their materials for a range of purposes, from bench marking and quality control to assisting reformulation. In the framework of the collaborative project VFL, a large set of physical experiments using different devices commonly used for powder characterization are carried out with the objective of evaluate reproducibility. In these set of experiments we look at the particle size influence for evaluation of bulk behaviour considering microscopic particle properties and cohesion strength.