CPACT related research Interests @
the Institute of Particle Science and Engineering: University of Leeds

Research in the Institute of Particle Science and Engineering (IPSE) at the University of Leeds is focused on the discovery and manufacture of particulate products (e.g. pharmaceuticals, biopharmaceuticals, functional nonmaterial and human health products), and is organised according to three themes: measurement, control and informatics; multi-scale modelling as well as manufacture. IPSE is well-equipped with laboratory (crystallisation, precipitation, milling, supercritical formulation rigs, etc) and measurement facilities).

The specific expertise to be brought to CPACT is summarised below:

On-line sensing and characterisation of particulate processes and products

This includes research on various PAT techniques (on-line imaging and image analysis, ultrasound spectroscopy, NIR, laser diffraction, ATR FTIR, on-line XRD and Raman spectroscopy). Application areas include crystallisation, formulation of nano-materials in high concentrations at super-critical conditions, precipitation, dry and wet-milling for production of submicron to nano materials.

Sensor and process data mining and chemometrics On-line signal and image processing using multi-scale wavelet analysis, principal and independent component analysis, neural networks, and fuzzy logic for the purpose of for feature extraction and dimension reduction, Characterisation of operational envelopes, causal knowledge discovery an mode development, multivariate statistical process monitoring.

These techniques have been used for

Multi-scale modelling

Development and application of advanced modelling techniques for analysis of complex processes acriss length scales from molecular scale to full industrial manufacturing scale. Examples of current wor include: distinct element modelling of granular deformation and flow with and without fluid interactions, Lattice-Boltzmann modelling, continuum numerical approaches such as CFD.

Crystallisation science and engineering

Molecular and crystallographic modelling, experimental studies of crystallisation processes from laboratory to industrial scale, PAT for crystallisation and synchrotron radiation techniques for materials characterisation

In addition, IPSE has a wide range of expertise in other areas of sensing, modelling and manufacture, such as process tomography, nano-fluids, computational fluid dynamics and other modelling methods.