In Process Particle Size Distribution Measurements and Control for Jet Milling Process

摘要

Jet milling is often used when a well-defined particle size distribution is required. This process avoids excessive heat production as well as contamination of the product. This makes jet milling very suitable for processing of plastics, Pharmaceuticals and food additives. The major disadvantage of the process is the very poor energy efficiency. In practice jet mills have to be operated below their maximum capacity in order to avoid the production of off-specification material, due to the operation disturbances. Therefore, it is important to automate operation with a real-time PSD instrument for quality control. A technique for in-line particle size measurement using laser diffraction is reported, which has been used to improve operation control of the jet mill grinding system. A CMOS pixel array sizer could be a more robust and flexible sizing sensor in this application than the exiting laser diffraction instrument.