Prof Rachel Smith's Talk

Start
Feb 20, 2023 - 16:00
End
Feb 20, 2023 - 17:00
Venue
Room no. 112, Chemical Engineering Department
Event Type
Speaker
Prof Rachel Smith Senior Lecturer, Department of Chemical and Biological Engineering, The University of Sheffield, UK
Title
Prof Rachel Smith's Talk

Abstract:
Particle-liquid and particle-particle interactions are fundamental to a huge range industrial manufacturing processes, including granulation, coating, drying, and fluidized bed processes.  These processes are critical to a wide range of industries, including foods, pharmaceuticals, consumer products, battery manufacture and many more.  There exists a considerable, but incomplete, body of understanding of the nano- and micro- scale interactions between particles and particles, and particles and fluids.  However, the ability to use this considerable knowledge to predict process performance, to design manufacturing processes, and to design particulate products to give desired performance is generally still considered a research exercise, and industry is often still reliant on substantial experimental trial and error approaches to product and process design.

Spherical agglomeration is a size enlargement process which has recently gained interest in the pharmaceutical industry. It addresses the followability and compressibility related problems of irregular platelet or needle like crystals by forming spherical-shaped agglomerates. This process is achieved by the addition of a binder liquid into a slurry of primary crystals which is often produced by anti-solvent crystallisation. Currently, there is poor mechanistic understanding of the rate processes occurring for formation of spherical agglomerates, and there is a lack of useful tools to predict final agglomerate properties or process performance. In this presentation, recent work on the spherical agglomeration process will be discussed, and work spanning experimental observation, development of mechanistic process understanding, and computational modelling will be presented.


Biosketch
Rachel Smith is a Senior Lecturer in the Department of Chemical and Biological Engineering at the University of Sheffield, with expertise in industrial particulate manufacturing across pharmaceutical, agri-chemical, consumer and battery manufacturing industries.  Her research focuses on the development of micro-scale understanding of particle-particle and particle-fluid interactions, and using this to advance prediction and design of particulate manufacturing processes and product performance.  Processes of interest include granulation, particle coating, spherical agglomeration, fluidized bed processes, spraying and spray-drying, slurries preparation and tableting/compaction. Her work uses both experimental and computational methods to address industrial particle processing opportunities and challenges.  Rachel holds a BEng (Hons) and PhD from the University of Queensland, Australia, and joined the University of Sheffield in 2012.