Mixing and Scale-up of Evolving Complex Fluids

Societal trends and economic conditions are driving products and processes towards sustainability. This involves raw materials, supply chains, processes, and equipment cleaning all moving towards less energy consumption and waste production. Continuous processes and process intensification are common themes that drive materials processing towards more concentrated ingredients and intermediates. Concentrated surfactant solutions, emulsions, suspensions, and polymer solutions require new approaches for scale-up of mixing and transport of these complex fluids. A common theme is rapidly evolving rheological properties as these complex fluids are mixed together. We present several examples of evolving complex fluids and associated processing equipment challenges. Integration of laboratory data, rheological models, fluid flow simulation, and data driven models provide a rich environment for solving these challenges.