Daniel Read and Estefania Lopez-Quiroga will be using your answers to convene a more focused (online) discussion to be scheduled mid-October.

- For example, in a porous medium, microstructure can describe the pore geometry.  

- In a polymer network, microstructure can describe the connectivity of molecules.  

Different mathematical tools may be needed to track how the different microstructures of materials evolve. 

See the examples below and add your own!

What are the scale-up challenges you are facing that are specific to formulated products?

Please keep your answers generic, within the pre-competitive spaces that can be common to different sectors, and focused on the scale up process specifically. The answers do not need much development, bullet points, specific points will be fine.

For example:

• changes in microstructure and properties after scale-up

• unknown interaction between microstructure and process conditions.

Please comment here or aligned with the posts below if you are interested!

1. Understanding how ingredients within a slurry lead to its (small-scale) rheology.

2. Translation of a slurry's rheology into its large-scale behaviour within a machine or process.

3. Defining and/or measuring time-dependent rheology (e.g. thixotropy).

1. Particle break-up within the slurry during grinding.

2. Effect of particles undergoing phase-change during a process.

3. Chemical reactions (inter-particle and between particles and the carrier liquid.

1. Reliable methods to scale-up small-scale results to large-scale processes.

2. An understanding of how material properties / ingredients inputted to the beginning of a process result in material properties at the end of a process.

Comment your ideas below!

- Other problems that were mentioned include predicting solubility and studying how particle size distributions, mixed particle populations, and packing effects influence the macroscopic function of a product.

- There are common physical processes that can influence microstructure such as drying and melting, which could also form the basis for new modelling problems.