Advanced Powder Handling

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Using numerical and experimental techniques to understand and optimise the powder-handling processes in modern food industries.

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Competitive advantage

  • Ability to understand powder behaviour at macro and/or micro scales
  • Experience in designing and optimising food powder-handing processes under a wide range of conditions, at low cost
  • Capability to model and characterise extra fine or coarse, non-spherical, or cohesive powders

Impact

  • Enhancing the quality of powder and powder-based products
  • Reducing operating costs and energy consumption by optimising raw materials, operational conditions and geometry parameters
  • Improving the operational efficiency and environmental-friendliness of powder-handling processes

Successful applications

  • Designed and optimised powder mixing in a ribbon mixer for a food company
  • Improved powder agglomerating with improved tablet quality for a pharmaceutical company
  • Applications for grain, food, dairy and soil powders etc. for a wide range of powder handling processes e.g., packing, mixing, briquetting, conveying, storage, drying and coating

Capabilities and facilities

  • State of the art computational techniques and skills including DEM, CFD, FEA
  • Advanced computational facilities and massive computing resources from NCI (National Computational Infrastructure)
  • Lab-scale test rigs of powder processing e.g., ribbon mixers and fluidised beds; particle characterization; and PIV for visualize particle movement

Our partners

  • COFCO
  • Suzhou New Life Medical Device Co. Ltd