5th World Congress on Particle Technology
Richardson travel bursar Ian Gabbott reports from the Orlando event
 The 5th World Congress on Particle Technology was held at Lake Buena Vista, just south of Orlando, from 23-27 April 2006. Over 700 scientific participants from around the world enjoyed hundreds of oral presentations and an impressive array of technical posters. The World Congress encompassed all types of size enlargement processes and associated topics, including wet and dry granulation, compaction, sintering, drying, nanotechnology, coating, storage, characterisation, fluidisation and encapsulation in addition to safety, environmental issues and teaching, over a similarly broad range of industries, from chemical, pharmaceutical, cosmetics, detergents and food to iron and steel, coal and mineral processing.
The first day’s track sessions were interspersed by captivating Plenary lectures by Alan Roberts, University of Newcastle, Australia; Wolfgang Peukert, University of Erlangen-Nuremberg, Germany; Yutaka Tsuji, Osaka University, Japan; Liang-Shih Fan, Ohio State University, USA; Martin Rhodes, Monash University, Australia; Sotiris Pratsinis, ETH Zurich, Switzerland and Reg Davies, University of Florida, Gainesville, USA, whose entertaining story about changes in particle characterisation over the years was imaginatively titled ‘From bulldog, to eagle, to dinosaur’, in reference to his own perceived status.
It was not all hard work, however. The final evening saw the World Congress banquet, a hugely successful and thoroughly enjoyable feast of food and drink, wrapped up by a magical performance by the University of Florida Theatre Group, who performed several contemporary Broadway tunes for the several hundred strong audience of particle technologists. The World Congress Chair, George Klinzing, was master of ceremonies for the banquet, at which the recipients of international awards were recognised and the organisers and track chairs were thanked for their efforts.
| Modelling and numerical simulation and granule structure and design are the most popular topics, in addition to agglomeration, breakage, mixing, segregation and characterisation |
The 5th World Congress on Particle Technology was organised by the Particle Technology Forum of the AIChE, with additional help from the International Fine Particle Research Institute, the Interamerican Confederation of Chemical Engineering, the Canadian Institute of Chemical Engineering and the Center for Latin American Particle Research. It was sponsored by Shell Global Solutions, Beckman Coulter, Procter & Gamble, the Nanotechnology forum of the AICHE, DuPont, Fluor, Malvern Instruments, Pelletron, and the University of Pittsburgh School of Engineering.
Overall, modelling and numerical simulation and granule structure and design continue to be the most popular topics, in addition to agglomeration, breakage, mixing, segregation and characterisation. Work presented at the World Congress was split almost equally between high shear and fluidised bed granulation, in addition to other areas such as tabletting, smart particles, fluid-particle interactions and nanotechnology.
Personally, the 5th World Congress on Particle Technology provided me with an excellent opportunity to present some of my own research to other members of the particle technology community who were also interested in granule structure, and more specifically the trade-off between strength and dissolution time. I found it a very rewarding experience with post-presentation questions and coffee-break conversations providing inspiration and ideas for future work.
Every four years the World Congress on Particle Technology invites members of the scientific community to converge and share information and insights to industrial, academic and civil problems. The 6th World Congress in Particle Technology will be held in Nuremberg, Germany in March of 2010 in cooperation with the 2010 ParTech / PowTech conference.
Ian Gabbott
University of Sheffield
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