Precise deposition of complex particles for structured functional products
Lead Research Organisation:
University of Surrey
Department Name: Chemical Engineering
Abstract
In the pharmaceutical industry, coatings have a very important place in manufacturing and product development. Solid dosage forms like tablets, pellets, granules etc. are typically coated in order to control the drug release within the body, and also to protect against external factors like moisture or attrition. This is often achieved through dry coating with fine powders, since this provides reduced environmental concerns (no volatile organic solvents emitted) and lower energy consumption (no subsequent drying or evaporation operations required). However, the dry coating process is wasteful in terms of coating powder used and energy input, since when the coating uniformity does not meet the requirement, the entire batch is disposed of. To mitigate this, an excess of coating powder is often used, with excessive energy input to ensure all solids are sufficiently coated. We aim to address these problems by determining for a given combination of substrates and powder coatings: (i) How is coating of a single powder layer influenced by particle properties? (ii) How should a mixer operate to provide uniform coating across the entire batch? (iii) What is the minimum energy input to ensure uniform product coating?
In this research we will determine how coating is achieved on the fundamental, particle level, by controlling and manipulating the distribution of particle physical (size, shape) and surface (roughness, interface energy) properties and characterising the resulting coating quality. Coating powders are typically extremely fine and cohesive, and hence are prone to agglomerating to form large clusters. Industrial powder coating requires these coating powder agglomerates to be consistently broken down to single particles and precisely delivered to the host. We will establish how the process can be tailored to enhance the ability of the system to achieve this for any powder. By determining the underlying principles of powder coating, and the influences of material properties and process parameters, we will create a regime map for dry powder coating, which will enable industry to tune coating operations to minimise powder and energy use.
In this research we will determine how coating is achieved on the fundamental, particle level, by controlling and manipulating the distribution of particle physical (size, shape) and surface (roughness, interface energy) properties and characterising the resulting coating quality. Coating powders are typically extremely fine and cohesive, and hence are prone to agglomerating to form large clusters. Industrial powder coating requires these coating powder agglomerates to be consistently broken down to single particles and precisely delivered to the host. We will establish how the process can be tailored to enhance the ability of the system to achieve this for any powder. By determining the underlying principles of powder coating, and the influences of material properties and process parameters, we will create a regime map for dry powder coating, which will enable industry to tune coating operations to minimise powder and energy use.
Planned Impact
The proposed research will achieve impacts in terms of knowledge, economy and people. In terms of knowledge, we will determine how coating is achieved on the fundamental, particle level, in order to optimise mixer design and operation; creating a regime map for dry powder coating. The developed framework will establish the fundamental science behind powder structuring in response to mechanical application. This knowledge will in itself be transformative, by allowing precise control of a single powder layer to be achieved. This also has far-reaching implications for industrial processes, such as dry powder spray-coating (e.g. of automotive and aviation vehicles), and additive manufacturing. Knowledge of the optimal combination of material properties to deliver dense, even coatings, will enable new coating materials, application methods and operational conditions to be developed.
In terms of economy, the improved understanding of coating mechanisms and optimisation of mixing processes developed in this research will lead to increased efficiency in pharmaceutical dry coating processes, through improved powder utilisation, reduction in waste batches and reduction in energy use. This will provide significant savings in resources (material and energy) and processing time. In the short term this will provide the greatest benefit to the UK pharmaceutical industry, a flagship of the UK manufacturing sector. The natural extension of this research to powder spray-coating and additive manufacturing will provide economical advantage to the UK automotive and aviation industries.
In terms of people, this research will train researchers to become highly skilled experts on powder structuring, mixing and surface interactions of powders. There is a distinct lack of this knowledge within the pharmaceutical sector, and so the trained researchers will be of great value to the UK workforce. The training of these researchers will be enhanced by (i) exposure to the UK and international research community through active conference attendance and participation (ii) in-coming and out-going visits between university and industry (iii) co-supervision of PhD and Masters Student research projects with the PI/Co-I in areas related to the project (iv) access to a wide range of training courses at the University of Surrey/Imperial College to boost their skills and develop their career, including public engagement training.
In terms of economy, the improved understanding of coating mechanisms and optimisation of mixing processes developed in this research will lead to increased efficiency in pharmaceutical dry coating processes, through improved powder utilisation, reduction in waste batches and reduction in energy use. This will provide significant savings in resources (material and energy) and processing time. In the short term this will provide the greatest benefit to the UK pharmaceutical industry, a flagship of the UK manufacturing sector. The natural extension of this research to powder spray-coating and additive manufacturing will provide economical advantage to the UK automotive and aviation industries.
In terms of people, this research will train researchers to become highly skilled experts on powder structuring, mixing and surface interactions of powders. There is a distinct lack of this knowledge within the pharmaceutical sector, and so the trained researchers will be of great value to the UK workforce. The training of these researchers will be enhanced by (i) exposure to the UK and international research community through active conference attendance and participation (ii) in-coming and out-going visits between university and industry (iii) co-supervision of PhD and Masters Student research projects with the PI/Co-I in areas related to the project (iv) access to a wide range of training courses at the University of Surrey/Imperial College to boost their skills and develop their career, including public engagement training.
Publications
Karde V
(2022)
Investigating sizing induced surface alterations in crystalline powders using surface energy heterogeneity determination
in Powder Technology
Karde V
(2023)
Use of shear sensitive coloured guest component to track powder mixing in adhesive binary mixtures
in Powder Technology
Karde, V.
(2023)
Use of shear sensitive coloured guest component to track powder mixing in adhesive binary mixtures
in Powder Technology
Khala M
(2023)
A numerical analysis of the influence of material properties on dry powder coating performance
in Chemical Engineering Research and Design
Khala M
(2023)
A regime map for dry powder coating: the influence of material properties and process parameters
in Frontiers in Chemical Engineering
Khala, M.
(2023)
A numerical analysis of the influence of material properties on dry powder coating performance
in Chemical Engineering Research and Design
Morgeneyer M
(2022)
Particle technology's contributions to the major challenges of the 21st century A predictive retrospective as a particular birthday present of IChemE
in Chemical Engineering Research and Design
Verma V
(2023)
Experimental Elucidation of Templated Crystallization and Secondary Processing of Peptides.
in Pharmaceutics
Description | The influence of material properties (size ratio, density ratio and surface energy) and process operating conditions (blade rotational speed, filling level, guest particle concentration, initial guest particle location and blade geometry) on coating efficiency was assessed. Increasing the size ratio and surface energy tends to provide good coating performance, however, for very high surface energies coating efficiency is reduced. Increasing the density ratio reduces the coating efficiency. High blade rotational speeds, low filling level and initially placing the guest particles just above the rotating blades give more uniformly distributed coatings. Furthermore, increasing the number of blades mobilises a greater volume of the powder bed, thus improving the coating performance. A regime map for the dry powder coating process in a blade-driven mixer was developed based on the granular bond number and mixing energy by considering the influence of the aforementioned material properties and process conditions on coating performance. A critical granular bond number exists above and below which good and poor coating occur, respectively. This regime map identifies combination of material properties and process conditions which provide optimal coating performance. Dry powder coating was shown to reduce the surface energy of the coated host powder compared to the uncoated host, which leads to a more free-flowing and less cohesive powder. For coating processes in which 2 guest powders are to be coated onto the host powder (tertiary system), the order of addition of the guests influences their surface coverage on the hosts. The material which is added first achieves a greater surface coverage than the one added second, however the surface energy is closer to that of the material added last. |
Exploitation Route | The developed regime map can be applied to industrial dry coating processes to identify optimum operating conditions to achieve good coating performance, thus reducing energy and material costs. Furthermore, the methodology used to develop the regime map in this work can be replicated to create regime maps for specific dry coating systems. The developed regime map can be further developed to incorporate the influence of other material properties such as particle shape and roughness. |
Sectors | Manufacturing, including Industrial Biotechology,Pharmaceuticals and Medical Biotechnology |
Description | Business engagement fund |
Amount | £1,500 (GBP) |
Funding ID | BEF#192 |
Organisation | Newcastle University |
Sector | Academic/University |
Country | United Kingdom |
Start | 04/2023 |
End | 07/2023 |
Description | EPSRC Imperial College London UKRI Impact Acceleration Account |
Amount | £77,837 (GBP) |
Funding ID | EP/X52556X/1 |
Organisation | Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC) |
Sector | Public |
Country | United Kingdom |
Start | 03/2023 |
End | 11/2023 |
Description | Impact Acceleration Account - EPSRC IAA: Development of a pilot scale coating regime map |
Amount | £12,500 (GBP) |
Funding ID | NU-014628 |
Organisation | Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC) |
Sector | Public |
Country | United Kingdom |
Start | 04/2023 |
End | 06/2023 |
Description | PhD Studentship at Imperial College |
Amount | £110,000 (GBP) |
Funding ID | Voucher No. 210099 |
Organisation | Johnson Matthey |
Sector | Private |
Country | United Kingdom |
Start | 10/2021 |
End | 09/2025 |
Description | Project Partner - DFE Pharma |
Organisation | DFE Pharma |
Department | DFE Pharma Netherlands |
Country | Netherlands |
Sector | Private |
PI Contribution | Project updates were presented to all partners every 2-3 months. |
Collaborator Contribution | The partners provided 4 powder samples for characterisation and dry powder coating experiments in the project, as well as insight and industrial experience to help inform the future direction of the project. |
Impact | No direct outputs or outcomes. |
Start Year | 2022 |
Description | Project Partner - Freeman Technology |
Organisation | Freeman Technology |
Country | United Kingdom |
Sector | Private |
PI Contribution | Project updates were presented to all partners every 2-3 months. |
Collaborator Contribution | The partners provided insight and industrial experience to help inform the future direction of the project. |
Impact | No direct outputs or outcomes. |
Start Year | 2020 |
Description | Project Partner - Johnson Matthey |
Organisation | Johnson Matthey |
Country | United Kingdom |
Sector | Private |
PI Contribution | Project updates were presented to all partners every 2-3 months. |
Collaborator Contribution | The partners provided insight and industrial experience to help inform the future direction of the project. |
Impact | No direct outputs or outcomes. |
Start Year | 2020 |
Description | Project Partner - P&G |
Organisation | Procter & Gamble |
Department | Procter & Gamble (United Kingdom) |
Country | United Kingdom |
Sector | Private |
PI Contribution | Project updates were presented to all partners every 2-3 months. |
Collaborator Contribution | The partners provided insight and industrial experience to help inform the future direction of the project. |
Impact | No direct outputs or outcomes. |
Start Year | 2022 |
Description | ACS Fall 2021 |
Form Of Engagement Activity | A talk or presentation |
Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
Geographic Reach | International |
Primary Audience | Postgraduate students |
Results and Impact | Online presentation at ACS Fall 2021 on "Mixture design and surface properties: Role of interparticle structuring in binary powder systems". |
Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2021 |
Description | APCChE - VK |
Form Of Engagement Activity | A talk or presentation |
Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
Geographic Reach | International |
Primary Audience | Professional Practitioners |
Results and Impact | Vikram Karde from Imperial College London presented his work 'A quick and contactless analysis of powder mixing conditions using a shear-sensitive coloured tracer' in 19th Asian Pacific Confederation of Chemical Engineering (APCChE) Congress, 2022 |
Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2022 |
URL | http://apcche2022.org/#:~:text=APCChE%202022%20will%20be%20a,benefit%20of%20the%20chemical%20enginee... |
Description | APCChE Keynote |
Form Of Engagement Activity | A talk or presentation |
Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
Geographic Reach | International |
Primary Audience | Professional Practitioners |
Results and Impact | Dr. Jerry Y. Y. Heng presented the work about the particle science in APCChE 2022, which will be a unique platform for R&D experts, professional chemical engineers, academicians, and students especially from this Asia Pacific region and from all over the world to exchange their ideas and expertise in these research areas and foster collaborations. |
Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2022 |
URL | http://apcche2022.org/keynote-speakers/ |
Description | CHoPS - CH |
Form Of Engagement Activity | A talk or presentation |
Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
Geographic Reach | International |
Primary Audience | Professional Practitioners |
Results and Impact | Colin Hare presented the work of Marv Khala on "A regime map for dry powder coating" at the 10th International Conference on Conveying and Handling of Particulate Solids (CHoPS). |
Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2022 |
URL | https://ifpri.net/events/10th-international-conference-conveying-and-handling-particulate-solids-cho... |
Description | CHoPS 2022 - VK |
Form Of Engagement Activity | A talk or presentation |
Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
Geographic Reach | International |
Primary Audience | Professional Practitioners |
Results and Impact | Vikram Karde from Imperial College London presented his work 'Investigating particle properties and process parameters for generating efficient dry particle coated system' in 10th International Conference on Conveying and Handling of Particulate Solids (CHoPS). |
Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2022 |
URL | https://ifpri.net/events/10th-international-conference-conveying-and-handling-particulate-solids-cho... |
Description | ChemEngDay UK 2022. |
Form Of Engagement Activity | A talk or presentation |
Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
Geographic Reach | International |
Primary Audience | Professional Practitioners |
Results and Impact | Virkam Karde presented the work about the 'Estimating mixing efficiency in guest-hosts particulate system using coloured nano-tracer' |
Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2022 |
URL | https://www.ucl.ac.uk/chemical-engineering/sites/chemical_engineering/files/chemengdayuk2022programm... |
Description | Northumbria seminar |
Form Of Engagement Activity | A talk or presentation |
Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
Geographic Reach | Local |
Primary Audience | Postgraduate students |
Results and Impact | Colin Hare presented the work of Marv Khala on dry powder coating in a seminar at Northumbria University. |
Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2022 |
Description | Online poster presentation at Powder Flow 2021 |
Form Of Engagement Activity | A talk or presentation |
Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
Geographic Reach | International |
Primary Audience | Postgraduate students |
Results and Impact | Online poster presentation in a breakout room on "Manipulating powder flow via surface chemistry" at Powder Flow 2021 Conference. |
Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2021 |
Description | Oral presentation at Asian Particle Technology Symposium 2021 |
Form Of Engagement Activity | A talk or presentation |
Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
Geographic Reach | International |
Primary Audience | Postgraduate students |
Results and Impact | Online oral presentation of the results of the computational findings of this project; influences of process parameters on dry powder coating performance and development of a regime map based on particle properties. |
Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2021 |
URL | https://apt2021.org/program.html |
Description | Oral presentation at ChemEngDayUK 2021 |
Form Of Engagement Activity | A talk or presentation |
Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
Geographic Reach | National |
Primary Audience | Postgraduate students |
Results and Impact | Presentation on "Process induced surface property variation for crystalline pharmaceutical solids" at ChemEngDayUK 2021. |
Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2021 |
Description | Oral presentation at Particles 2021 |
Form Of Engagement Activity | A talk or presentation |
Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
Geographic Reach | International |
Primary Audience | Postgraduate students |
Results and Impact | Online oral presentation of the results of the computational findings of this project; influences of process parameters on dry powder coating performance and development of a regime map based on particle properties. |
Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2021 |
URL | https://congress.cimne.com/Particles2021/frontal/Objectives.asp |
Description | P&G Seminar 2022 |
Form Of Engagement Activity | A talk or presentation |
Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
Geographic Reach | International |
Primary Audience | Professional Practitioners |
Results and Impact | Colin Hare gave a presentation on the work of Marv Khala and Vikram Karde on dry powder coating to R&D groups at Cincinnati (USA) and Newcastle (UK) over Teams. |
Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2022 |
Description | Presentation to UCB |
Form Of Engagement Activity | A talk or presentation |
Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
Geographic Reach | International |
Primary Audience | Industry/Business |
Results and Impact | A presentation on the concept of the research and progress made to date was given to UCB (Belgium), a pharmaceutical company. |
Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2021 |
Description | Seminar to Loughborough University Chemical Engineering Department |
Form Of Engagement Activity | A talk or presentation |
Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
Geographic Reach | National |
Primary Audience | Professional Practitioners |
Results and Impact | Presentation on the findings of the project to an academic audience at Loughborough University (Chemical Engineering department). |
Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2021 |
Description | WCPT 9 - CH |
Form Of Engagement Activity | A talk or presentation |
Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
Geographic Reach | International |
Primary Audience | Professional Practitioners |
Results and Impact | Colin Hare presented the work of Marv Khala on "Assessing the influence of surface energy heterogeneity on dry powder coating performance in DEM" at the 9th World Congress on Particle Technology. |
Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2022 |
URL | https://wcpt9.org/wp-content/uploads/WCPT9-Scientific-Program_Madrid-2022.pdf |
Description | WCPT 9 - VK |
Form Of Engagement Activity | A talk or presentation |
Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
Geographic Reach | International |
Primary Audience | Professional Practitioners |
Results and Impact | Dr. Vikram Karde presented his work about 'Tracking the order of mixing effects in ternary adhesive mixtures using a coloured tracer'. In the 9th World Congress on Particle Technology (WCPT9), 2022, Madrid, Spain. |
Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2022 |
URL | https://wcpt9.org/wp-content/uploads/WCPT9-Scientific-Program_Madrid-2022.pdf |