Particle technology

Powders and granular materials are in common use in the chemical and allied industries yet traditional research and teaching in chemical engineering do not reflect this significance. Quite apart from the desire to advance knowledge for traditional processes and to enhance competitiveness, demands arise from the extension of chemical engineering ideas to a much broader range of products and processes. Progress in particle technology is now possible from advances in theory, from instrumentation, and from computer methods. The subjects of elasticity, plasticity and frictional how of powders are central to an understanding of behaviour. In general, particles have a complicated internal structure and the design and engineering of this structure is a critical feature, with packing and colloidal effects, to name but two, being critical. Stress is not uniformly transmitted, this passing along preferred paths with breakage being initiated from the tips of cracks in the paths. There is now a wide range of accessible and important problems that can and should be solved; particle technology does, after all, constitute a good half of the discipline.