Mill, material, and process parameters - A mechanistic model for the set-up of wet-stirred media milling processes

Stirred media milling is frequently used to generate nanoparticles for industrial applications such as paints, inks, and food or for the life sciences. Each product suspension has different requirements and therefore different material and formulation parameters. The first attempts to set up a new process are experimental in nature, especially the determination of a suitable composition. To adapt a process to the production scale, more experimental work is often needed to determine suitable operation parameters with regard to energy consumption, throughput, and investment cost. The energy consumption is influenced by operation parameters such as the size of the grinding media or the stirrer tip speed, whereas the investment costs are influenced by the mill geometry and size and the type of grinding media used. Therefore, it is challenging to transfer or scale up processes because lab-scale mills are smaller and may have different geometries than production-scale mills. Moreover, it is well known that the lab-scale operation parameters cannot be easily adapted to the production scale. In this study, the stress model developed by Kwade was improved by introducing parameters corresponding to the mill and the material in addition to the process parameters. Using this model, the optimum operating conditions for stirred media milling processes can be determined with a reduced amount of experimental work, even for geometrically unequal mills. (C) 2019 The Society of Powder Technology Japan. Published by Elsevier B.V. and The Society of Powder Technology Japan. All rights reserved.