The Centre in Advanced Fluid Engineering for Digital Manufacturing (CAFE4DM)

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This 5 year project aims to address the challenges in understanding, creating and scaling up manufacturing processes for formulated products with particular reference to those in fast moving consumer goods (home/personal care and food products). The main objective is to develop a new modelling approach which will be combined with experimental measurements of the liquid properties to describe these complex fluids and enable a significant reduction in the conventional physical experimentation required to develop new formulations. The methodologies developed will provide a detailed understanding of the behaviour of these liquids under process conditions which will facilitate the decision making process and accelerate the introduction of new, innovative products to the market optimised to deliver benefits to consumers, e.g. shiny hair or mouthfeel for ice cream. The project brings together a multi-disciplinary team from the University of Manchester, the University of Cambridge and Unilever who are a global leader in the research, process design and manufacture of formulated products. The project is also supported by Process Systems Enterprise Ltd.. A major outcome of the project will be a demonstrator of the Industry 4.0 concept which will enable smart factories to be realised in the process sector and thus allow the UK to remain at the forefront of manufacturing in this field.