Dr. Paul Mort

Procter & Gamble Co.

Cincinnati, OH

Agglomeration is carried out to add value to many different materials over many scales of production, from specialty materials and pharmaceuticals made in kg/day batches to continuous processes for detergents and fertilizers measured in tons/hour. For example, agglomeration may be performed to produce free-flowing, dust-free particles that are optimized for uses such as tabletting, dispersion/dissolution and compact delivery (i.e., increase the bulk density).

Transformations describe the many ways in which the raw materials are changed by the process to form the product. Agglomeration includes a complicated collection of transformations, typically including the mixing of powder feeds, binder atomization, dispersion of binder in powders, wetting and spreading of binder on particle surfaces, chemical reactions between binder and powder, particle growth by coalescence, consolidation, attrition and drying. This talk briefly reviews the agglomeration literature in order to: 1) consider the broad set of transformations that typically have an important role in agglomeration processes; and 2) propose sets of process parameters and material properties that are critical to scale-up and process control. Scale-up is considered on both macroscopic process scales and on the microscale of individual particles. Both scales are important in order to achieve successful scale-up in production while maintaining consistent product attributes.