Michael A. Henson Group

Integrated Product and Process Design for Emulsified Products

Emuslified products are ubiquitous in the chemical, food and beverage, consumer products and pharmaceutical industries. The design and manufacturing of emulsified products is a formidable task due to the complex effect of chemical formulation and processing conditions on end-use properties. These products are currently developed through trial-and-error experimental methodologies that are resource intensive and substantially slow the time to market. The objective of this project is to develop design and operating strategies that allow rapid innovation and effective manufacturing of emulsified products with targeted end-use properties. The research focuses on three types of products manufactured using high pressure homogenization: (1) emulsion systems for the delivery of nutraceuticals such as w-3 fatty acids and lycopene, which are increasingly important for improving human health and performance; and (2) pharmaceutical emulsions that contain hydrophobic drugs such as doxorubicin and melphalan, which are used as injectable anti-cancer agents; and (3) oil-in-water emulsions used to improve the flow characteristics of heavy oils for pipeline transportation. Our initial work has focused on the development of population balance equation (PBE) models for the prediction of drop size distributions. Simplified PBE and physical property models will be developed to allow the prediction of feasible end-use properties as a function of formulation and processing variables. The hierarchical application of design heuristics will be used to efficiently reduce the space of feasible designs and to generate a few promising candidates for more detailed experimental and computational analysis. Modeling errors will be addressed through the development of run-to-run control strategies that use drop size distribution and rheological measurements available after each pass of the homogenizer to update the processing variables for the next pass. Proof-of-concept will be demonstrated by designing and producing functional emulsions using the high pressure homogenization facility in our laboratory.

Funding: ACS Petroleum Research Fund (#44526-AC9), National Science Foundation (#0730795), Unilever, UMass Process Design and Control Center

Student: Neha Raikar (5th year Ph.D.) and Jason Rosenberg (2nd Year Ph.D.)

Collaborators: Profs. Surita Bhatia, Michael Malone and Julian McClements (UMass)

Publications and Recent Presentations:

1. Raikar N., S. R. Bhatia, M. F. Malone and M. A. Henson, "Self-Similar Inverse Population Balance Modeling for Turbulently Prepared Batch Emulsions: Sensitivity to Measurement Errors," Chemical Engineering Science, 61 7421-7435 (2006). [PDF]
2. Raikar N., S. R. Bhatia, M. F. Malone and M. A. Henson, "Application of Population Balance Equation Modeling to Food Emulsions," AIChE Annual Meeting, Salt Lake City, UT, November 2007.