Grant: Engage Grants Program

Spray drying has a wide range of application within the industries such as the food industries, biomedical and pharmaceutical industries. The particle size distribution is one of the most important characteristics of a spray drying system affecting both the properties and performance of intermediate and final products. It may also greatly impact the nature and efficiency of the manufacturing process. Hence, there is a need for appropriate means of characterization of particle size distributions. There are different laser based methods being commonly used to size the droplets. However, they are complex, expensive, and difficult to use and require specialists to adjust and maintain them. This project aims to develop a droplet size measurement equipment based on a novel and patented concept. It will be an affordable, rapid and convenient method which provided instantaneous information about the particle size distribution. It delivers accurate results across a wide range of particle sizes using a novel design including a light source, Fourier lens and CCD camera. As a particle passes through the light source, the angular variation occurs in intensity of light, yielding scattering pattern. The pattern is magnified by the lens and detected using CCD camera. The size of droplets will then be extracted from scattering pattern of the particles using an advance signal processing approach with an inexpensive FPGA-based digital control system. Research and development of an accurate spray droplet measurement system is of great importance to a wide range of industries in Canada including biomedical and pharmaceutical. Continuous characterization of the size of spray droplets will allow greater understanding of the manufacturing process. Any potential variations during production and machine start up and shut down could be detected with these real-time process monitoring techniques.