Development and investigation of a novel system for spray droplet sizer

喷雾干燥在食品、生物医药、制药等行业有着广泛的应用。粒度分布是喷雾干燥系统最重要的特性之一，它影响着中间产品和最终产品的性质和性能。它还可能极大地影响制造过程的性质和效率。因此，需要适当的手段来表征颗粒大小分布。通常使用不同的基于激光的方法来确定液滴的大小。然而，它们复杂、昂贵、难以使用，需要专家进行调整和维护。 该项目旨在开发一种基于一种新颖的专利概念的液滴尺寸测量设备。这将是一种经济、快速和方便的方法，可以提供有关粒度分布的瞬时信息。它使用包括光源、傅立叶透镜和ccd摄像头在内的新颖设计，在各种颗粒尺寸范围内提供准确的结果。当粒子通过光源时，光的强度会发生角度变化，从而产生散射图案。该图案由镜头放大，并使用CCD相机进行检测。然后使用先进的信号处理方法和廉价的基于现场可编程门阵列的数字控制系统从颗粒的散射模式中提取液滴的大小。 研究和开发精确的喷雾液滴测量系统对加拿大包括生物医学和制药在内的广泛行业具有重要意义。对喷雾液滴大小的持续表征将有助于更好地了解制造过程。使用这些实时过程监控技术，可以检测到生产和机器启动和关闭过程中的任何潜在变化。

Spray drying has a wide range of application within the industries such as the food industries, biomedical and pharmaceutical industries. The particle size distribution is one of the most important characteristics of a spray drying system affecting both the properties and performance of intermediate and final products. It may also greatly impact the nature and efficiency of the manufacturing process. Hence, there is a need for appropriate means of characterization of particle size distributions. There are different laser based methods being commonly used to size the droplets. However, they are complex, expensive, and difficult to use and require specialists to adjust and maintain them. This project aims to develop a droplet size measurement equipment based on a novel and patented concept. It will be an affordable, rapid and convenient method which provided instantaneous information about the particle size distribution. It delivers accurate results across a wide range of particle sizes using a novel design including a light source, Fourier lens and CCD camera. As a particle passes through the light source, the angular variation occurs in intensity of light, yielding scattering pattern. The pattern is magnified by the lens and detected using CCD camera. The size of droplets will then be extracted from scattering pattern of the particles using an advance signal processing approach with an inexpensive FPGA-based digital control system. Research and development of an accurate spray droplet measurement system is of great importance to a wide range of industries in Canada including biomedical and pharmaceutical. Continuous characterization of the size of spray droplets will allow greater understanding of the manufacturing process. Any potential variations during production and machine start up and shut down could be detected with these real-time process monitoring techniques.