The Simulation of Spray Coating Process Using Compartmental Based Population Balance Model

The population balance models have been widely used to simulate the evolution of particle size distributions through various particulate processes. In this paper, a spray coating process is studied in which particles are fluidized in a paddle mixer and sprayed from above. The particle flow heterogeneity is captured with a prior modeling tool discrete element method (DEM), and the outcome of particle residence time distribution is applied to decompose the mixer into a sub-compartmental model. A multi-dimensional population balance framework is then developed in order to obtain the detailed, multivariate particle distribution. The model has been conducted to investigate the effect of particle size distribution and process parameters on the coating variability.