BHR and its partners have been awarded three year STREP (Specific Targeted Research or Innovation Project) funding under the EC Framework Programme 6 to investigate processes for dispersing nano-particles into a liquid medium.

The project aims to develop the next generation of process tools and methodologies for the design and production of products containing nano-particles in a highly dispersed, functional and stable state.

NEW: The project website is now at www.proform-fp6.com

The Problem
In order to apply nano technology, process sectors and their client industries need to be able to:

• incorporate nano-particles into products in a fully dispersed and stable state
• while still allowing the material to fully express its functionality

Currently, the design of processes that involve the dispersion of micro- and nano- particles is primarily based on past knowledge and "trial and error" rather than fundamental understanding. This means:

• Longer time to market
• Higher development costs
• Non-optimal final results
• Poor quality control
• Excessive waste production

There is an urgent need for a better approach!

The Approach
This project will concentrate on a fundamental study of processes that involve the dispersion of micro- and nano- particles in a liquid medium, and use this understanding as the basis for producing methodologies for advanced product formulation and process technologies. These processes typically involve several steps depending on the particle type: wetting; incorporation into the liquid phase; dispersing; dissolving.

This will require the development of fundamental understanding of phenomena related to the processing of nano-particles including:

• multi-scale hydrodynamics
• colloidal stability
• manipulation of the particle size distribution and medium composition

With this understanding, the physical properties of dispersed nano-particle products can be improved and waste reduced for economic and environmental savings.

The Work

• Identification and adoption of appropriate methods for the characterisation of relevant particles (wettability, porosity, particle shape, size distribution, density and aggregate strength), liquid phase (rheology) and dispersion (rheology and stability) physical properties
• Study of the implications of the changes in the liquid phase due to the presence and/or dissolution of particles
• Investigation of the incorporation and dispersion of nano-particles into a liquid, taking into account the relevant particle and liquid physical properties, mechanical phenomena and fluid dynamics within the processing devices
• Development of a validated CFD model that will incorporate the relevant fluid dynamics related parameters as well as solid and liquid phase properties
• Development of methodologies for the incorporation, dispersion and stabilisation of nano-particles based on fundamental understanding.

The Results Expected

• standard methods and protocols for characterising nano-particles and their inter-actions with fluids
• a databank of generic information for characterising these particles (namely: wettability, porosity, particle size distribution, surface free energy, particle morphology, agglomerate strength)
• quantification of the performance of a range of process equipment for their effective preparation of nano-particles, in terms of their de-agglomeration performance for a variety of nano-particles
• mechanistic models for describing the incorporation and dispersion of nano-particles (and aggregates) in a liquid medium
• best practise advice and design guides on the selection and/or design of process equipment for different nano-particle characteristics and chemical product requirements
• numerical models for rheological properties of suspensions, kinetics of sub-processes, fluid flow and mixing
• a baseline for integration of the models into engineering simulation code, including CAPE tools

Partners
BHR Group will lead the project, with nine other partners comprising both large companies, SMEs and academia. Together they are active in production, research, consultancy and software development and have a wide range of unique and complementary expertise relevant to this project. Partners are:

BHR Group Limited, UK
Karlsruhe University, Institute of Food Process Engineering, Germany
Bayer Technology Services GmbH, Germany
Loughborough University, Department of Chemical Engineering (UK)
Unilever UK Central Resources Ltd
Birmingham University School of Engineering, UK
Warsaw University of Technology, Department of Chemical and Process Engineering Division of Mechanical Engineering and Process Dynamics, Poland.
Poznan University of Technology, Faculty of Chemical Technology, Institute of Chemical Technology and Engineering, Poland.
Rockfield Software Ltd (UK)
Centre for Computational Continuum Mechanics (C3M), doo. (Slovenia)

Please contact us if you have an interest in, or an enquiry on nano-particle technology.