Project Details
Projekt
Coordination Funds
Applicant
Professor Dr.-Ing. Lutz Mädler
Subject Area
Mechanical Process Engineering
Term
since 2021
Project identifier
Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 462226334
The mixing of disperse systems (particles and powders) is a traditional unit operation in process engineering. The applications of mixed particulate systems range from the processing of food, pharmaceutical and chemical substances to materials processing and materials engineering. Functional mixing of different particle types (heteroaggregation) has the potential to create outstanding new properties of disperse products that depend on the mixture composition and various secondary process conditions. A new product property can be created by the direct contact of different particles (heterocontact) and thus by the resulting interface between the respective subcomponents. Many applications have shown that these heterocontacts are of fundamental importance for certain functional properties. In most cases, the new properties result from the transfer of charges, mass, heat, forces or moments without the need for a chemical reaction between the components. The quality of such a particle mixture is therefore directly related to the contact points and interfaces of the different particles and the details of the interaction between their species in contact. The new property from the contact zone controls the material and product properties of the entire system, which is referred to as heterocontact in the context of SPP. Direct information on the quality of the heterocontact (e.g. number of contacts, transport properties between different particle types) could therefore form the basis for a fundamental description of the new properties of the particle mixture. At the same time, the heteroaggregation process for generating such heterocontacts must be investigated and controlled. In the remaining three years of the SPP, research will increasingly focus on specific material functions of the heteroaggregated particulate systems, which will be verified and linked to the process parameters. This focus in turn places special demands on adapted process measurement and control techniques as well as on material and particle characterization. In detail, the SPP has the following objectives: - Utilization of previous findings for multi-stage processes for the production of hetero-aggregates with integrated process control. This includes aerosol processes for the defined generation of hetero-aggregates, with adequate process diagnostics for the detection of mixing processes. - Utilization and coupling of various CFD, particle and reaction models and development of a holistic simulation environment for the design of material functions. - Establishment of standard procedures for the characterization of heteroaggregates in the sub-micrometer range using sample trains from rapid aggregation processes and tomographic methods for the characterization of heteroaggregates.
DFG Programme
Priority Programmes
