Twin Screw Granulation: Improved Granule Quality via On-Line Monitoring.

A fully funded 3 year PhD studentship (EPSRC Industrial CASE award, co-funded by GlaxoSmithKline) is available on twin screw granulation. Granulation is the process of agglomerating particles into large semi-permanent aggregates. It is used extensively in many sectors of industry, including the pharmaceutical industry, as it is an effective method of enhancing the physical characteristics of materials such as flowability, strength and dissolution. The process can be carried out using a variety of different pieces of equipment such as the fluidised bed, high shear mixer, roller compactor and twin screw granulator.
The instrumentation of interest in this project is the twin screw granulator (TSG). The TSG has recently gained importance in other areas such as plastic processing, polymer compounding and processing, and in pharmaceutical processes like mixing and continuous granulation. The process of granulation, including the flow pattern of the powder, has been studied to a limited extent in the TSG. The understanding of the flow patterns for a given screw configuration may yield useful information about the mechanism of granulation in the TSG. Therefore, the flow pattern of materials in TSG has to be seen as a key factor in determining final granule properties.
The Particle Groups Group at the University of Sheffield is equipped with a TSG. Recent research within the Group has focused on the effect of process and formulation variables on formulation velocity in a TSG, helping to qualitatively understand the twin screw process. In this new study, the aim will be to develop a control system for the TSG which will enable control of the product quality based on on-line monitoring.