Strathclyde is working on process analysis techniques with particular emphasis on the Chemicals and Pharmaceutical industries.
The following recent projects involve staff and students from the departments of Pure & Applied Chemistry, Chemical and Process Engineering, Strathclyde Institute of Pharmacy and Biomedical Sciences, Electronic and Electrical Engineering, and Mathematics:
• Comparison of transmission and back scattered Raman spectroscopy for the analysis of powders and tablets
• Comparison of near infrared spectrometry, Raman spectrometry and acoustic emission for the non-invasive monitoring of powder blending
• Development of methodologies for the real-time monitoring of powder drying with emphasis on effects on particle size
• Developments in MIR-ATR probe technology based on polycrystalline silver halide optical fibres
• Development of optical interfaces for the non-invasive monitoring of microflow reactors by Raman spectrometry
• Comparison of calorimetry and NIR/MIR spectrometry for reaction monitoring
• Evaluation of techniques for on-line and non-invasive monitoring of fermentation processes
• In-situ characterisation of polymer stabilized pigment dispersions using spectroscopic techniques
• Modelling of acoustic wave permeation through reactor walls leading to the modelling and construction of new transducers for non-invasive monitoring of heterogeneous reaction processes by acoustic emission
• Developments in calibration transfer algorithms for application in process analysis
• Investigations of particulate processes and the effects that scattering has on NIR spectra
• Development of low-field NMR spectrometry for process analysis
• Developments in Chemometric calibration methodology using a DoE approach
• In-situ monitoring of crystallisation processes
• Optical property measurements using Integrating Sphere:
• Total Diffuse Transmittance, Total diffuse Reflectance, Collimated Transmittance in conjunction with the inverse Adding-Doubling method to extract bulk absorption and scattering properties.
• Physical information (refractive index, particle size, shape and microstructure): Using Mie theory for spherical and T-matrix method or Raleigh-Gans approximation for non-spherical particles.
• Optical property measurements using spatially resolved system (reflectance at multiple source to detector distances). A spatially resolved spectrometer system has been built in-house – capable of up to 9 simultaneous measurements.
• Easier to implement online/inline/in-vivo measurement system.
• Novel semi-empirical methodologies for scatter correction in order to improve the performance of calibration models for estimating chemical properties.
• Application of these methodologies to emulsions and emulsion polymerisation, Fermentation reactions, powder mixtures.
• Mass Spectometry
• Calibration Transfer Algorithms
• Acoustic Techniques
• Particle Size Analysis
• Particle Image Analysis
• Laser Induced Fluorescence
- Computer/machine vision for chemical kinetics
Additional expertise in atomic spectrometry, XRF spectrometry and chromatography, dynamic light scattering measurement, laser diffraction measurement, surface enhanced Raman spectroscopy, surface plasmon spectroscopy.