Funded and steered by industry since 1983, The Fluid Mixing Processes industrial research consortium, FMP, develops exploitable knowledge and tools to help design, troubleshoot, optimise, intensify and scale mixing processes. Member companies get exclusive access to the confidential results and all deliverables, which cover mixing using stirred tanks, in-line mixers, rotor-stators and jets.
Members are largely multi-national manufacturing companies in the speciality chemicals, pharmaceutical, personal care, food and energy sectors - the breadth of Membership showing the wide applicability of the work. All industries face common challenges of rapidly developing high performance innovative products in an environment with increased regulations, quality assurance requirements, and pressure on costs. FMP focusses on providing critical information required for this not available anywhere in the public domain.
FMP continuously expands its mixing knowledge through a research program driven by Members. New performance correlations with guidance on the safe limits of their application, good practice guidelines and scale-up methods are developed using data obtained in its own lab. Here tests are performed at a broad range of scales and using a vast collection of industrially relevant mixing equipment. Most stirred vessel and in-line mixing tests are performed in transparent tanks and pipes, allowing visualisation of the process which massively aids understanding and interpretation. FMP also tests the validity of publicly available information under industrially relevant conditions.
Results are presented to Members at biannual Steering Committee Meetings, held both in the UK and the USA. As well as discussing analysis of the test results, Members use this valuable networking opportunity to discuss the future direction of testing with both the FMP team and their peers from different companies. This cross-industry knowledge transfer is an important aspect of the project, ensuring the generic FMP findings can be applied most effectively by each Member to their own processes. FMP runs on an annual cycle, with Members voting on which research projects proposed by the FMP team should proceed following the Spring Steering Committee Meetings. The confidential voting system ensures that all Members get an equal say in determining the work program.
FMP provides a software tool to allow easy prediction of mixer performance using its own methods and data. Rather than a licensed piece of software with the models and supporting data being hidden, it is in the form of a Microsoft Excel® spreadsheet, albeit one with a graphical user interface and large number of practical features aiding its useability. The advantage of this approach is that the tool is fully transparent, and it can be distributed throughout a Member company in any way they choose, without any restrictions on the number of users. All of the project deliverables are available on the FMP website, which includes documentation of all of the correlations and data used to develop the software.
FMP provides tailored confidential support for each company. As well as guidance on the application of the knowledge, it can also include confidential testing in the FMP laboratories so companies can collect data focussed on understanding and improving their own specific processes. Direct access to the unrivalled FMP expertise expands each Member companies’ ability to quickly and effectively deal with mixing challenges. Membership also includes customized training on industrial mixing fundamentals, key concepts, practical advice and good practice. FMP is designed to build the awareness of mixing within Member companies, meaning engineers can effectively apply learnings to multiple processes and share knowledge rather than just calculation results with their peers.