Fine grinding of multicomponent systems in stirred media mills

• Applicant: Professor Dr.-Ing. Arno Kwade
• Subject Area: Mechanical Process Engineering
• Term: from 2016 to 2024
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 282609919

The comminution of multicomponent systems introduces a series of scientific questions regarding the basic physical understanding of comminution itself, including analysis and evaluation. Moreover, the multicomponent grinding occurs in many industrial applications like recycling, mineral industries, mechanochemistry or building materials. Fine grinding of single components in stirred media mills was studied intensely during the past years and can be described by physical based process models. In contrast, neither the comminution of multicomponent mixtures nor the comminution composite systems can be described by these models yet and several questions regarding the evaluation/analysis of the grinding result are coming up. This research proposal focuses on the systematic investigation of grinding multicomponent systems and related analysis techniques. The comminution behavior of defined material mixtures should be evaluated with respect to increased selectivity, efficiency and dependency on process and material parameters. Furthermore, the impact of material structure on the comminution needs to be investigated. Therefore, materials with intrinsically different morphologies as well as composite materials should be investigated and compared to equivalent mixtures of single components. Based on experimental results, an existing process model should be further developed to enable the description of specific energy requirement of multicomponent comminution. The purpose is to gain a deep, fundamental process understanding of wet multicomponent comminution and based on that, the development of new approaches for the description of multicomponent comminution.

• DFG Programme: Research Grants
• Co-Investigator: Professorin Dr.-Ing. Sandra Breitung-Faes