Best Practice for Inline Particle Size Characterization white paper

Mettler Toledo has presented a white paper to help those working in the chemical, food, consumer product and mineral industries meet the challenge of understanding, optimising and controlling particle and droplet systems in a variety of applications including suspensions, emulsions and crystallisations.

‘Best Practice for Inline Particle Size Characterization’ reviews a series of real-life examples where prominent food, chemical and consumer product companies have used inline characterisation methods to measure real-time particle size dynamics at full-process concentration to ensure repeatable process endpoints, improve yield and optimise product quality.

Inconsistencies in solid or liquid dispersion, agglomeration or precipitation can create variability in product stability and manufacturing throughput. By understanding the real-time effect of changing process parameters such as surface chemistry, pH, temperature and mixing conditions, inline measurements provide critical information that can be used to not only avoid failure but also to save time and improve productivity.

Full-concentration measurements are applied to eliminate process inconsistencies, and activities such as homogenisation and crystallisation become easier to scale up.

Specific examples discussed include: eliminating fines to improve solid/liquid separations; improving product stability during liquid emulsion formulation; meeting particle size specifications consistently to avoid bottlenecks; and ensuring product repeatability through optimised homogenisation. Enabling technologies reviewed in the paper include ParticleTrack with FBRM (Focused Beam Reflectance Measurement) technology and PVM.