Henry Baker

• MEng (Hons) Chemical Engineering
• Investigating the fluidisation and behaviour of dry cohesive powders in axially rotating drums.

In the pharmaceutical industry powder mixing in rotating drums is regularly carried out for many processes. Originally, the research project was investigating the fluidization of cohesive powders in rotating drums as they are typically difficult to fluidize, which would potentially be advantageous   for general powder processing. However, we could not replicate the fluidization seen in previous research. In other attempts to fluidize additive powders were used and fluidization was achieved, this presents a possible method to achieve fluidization in the future. The other observations made were based on the behaviour of the cohesive powder when compared to a non-cohesive powder. A regime map was determined for dry cohesive powders as the function of rotational velocities of a drum, which in turn will allow for a choice to be made to find the optimal regime in the future research.

Funding source: Newcastle University 

Project supervisor: Dr Steven Wang and Dr Vladimir Zivkovic