Particle technology: the 4M business

I have never thought of Particle Technology as a separate discipline or training, rather have I seen it as an integral and vital part of the engineering discipline of Process Technology. This discipline is often called Chemical Engineering but the process industries encompass far more than chemicals, they include other industries such as pharmaceutics, minerals and food. It has been estimated that 70% of the final or intermediate products of these process industries are in particulate form. They may be called a powder, paste, slurry, suspension, emulsion, aerosol or spray. The common feature is that there is a continuous and a disperse phase. The disperse phase is in the form of particles. Of course, the science of particulate materials has important applications in almost every branch of technology, for example in civil engineering, electronics and combustion engineering. The essential difference, in process engineering, is that the particulate nature of the materials is not just inherent; rather we deliberately design both the particulate product and the process to make it. Thus, two of the Ms in this business are the Manipulating and Making of particles. The properties of a particulate material depend upon those of the constituent materials but also critically upon the disposition of the particulate phase. To manipulate the product, we create a mixture of sizes, shapes and species that will deliver the required functional properties. The consequent step, the making, is to design and operate the processes that will make that mixture. The tools that we use are Measuring and Modelling. These tools are not exclusive to particle technology, they are the tools used by any process engineer.