This wealth of practical knowledge and know-how is freely shared in white papers that can be found on corporate websites and cited in blogs and help forums. Following are a few of the white papers that have come across my web browser most recently.

Application Example: Feeding & Conveying in Polyolefin Production
This 12 page document by the K-Tron Process Group may be the most comprehensive white paper they've yet published, which is saying a lot considering the 28 other white papers available for download, covering food, pharmaceutical, chemical and the plastics industries. The carefully illustrated paper proves a complete review of the many processes available today in producing the most important polymer resins used in the world today. You can download Feeding & Conveying in Polyolefin Production here. Registration is free and gives you access to all the other white papers, spec sheets and brochures on the site. While you're there on the Polyolefin Production page, you'll also see a cool fly-through animation of feeding and conveying in the dry-end of the polyolefin process.

BlueLevel Technologies: Level Measurement and Monitoring White Papers
BlueLevel Technologies currently offers 11 white papers on their website covering a variety of topics and issues related to level measurement and monitoring.  Topics include overviews of products and technologies available for powder and bulk solids applications, industry-specific applications, and safety issues. BlueLevel Technologies' Managing Director Joe Lewis was an early advocate of publishing white papers that document a company's expertise on a particular subject and serve as educational tools. See his White Papers Are Great Tools For Assessing Vendor Expertise article that he wrote for this blog in 2005.

Hosokawa Micron Powder Systems: Powder Processing Educational Center
The Hosokawa Micron Powder Systems website provides an Educational Center where you'll find 12 technical articles on a variety of powder processing topics: 

• Advances in Powder Micronization Technology for the Pharmaceutical Industry
• Advances in Powder Processing Technologies for Chemical, Food and Mineral Applications
• Combustion Research Center Quits Milling Around, Starts Milling On-Site
• Dry Agglomeration Technology Using Bepex Roller Co
• Fluidized Bed Jet Milling for Economical Powder Processing
• Stirred Freeze Drying – 3 pages
• Homing in On the Best Size Reduction Method
• Innovative Milling & Micronization Techniques For the Pharmaceutical Industry
• Sizing Up Grinding Mills
• The Future of Freeze Drying
• Toner Tests Mill, Mix, and Classify Ingredients
• Increasing SOx removal efficiencies in Dry Sorbent Injection Systems

The white papers are PDFs and free to download. In The Future of Freeze Drying you'll find a brief history of the process, which is said to go back to the ancient Incas, who preserved food by freezing it in the winter mountains. At those high altitudes the frozen water is removed through the low vapor pressure of the water in the surrounding air. Although the process was slow,
the quality of the food remained remarkably good over time.

Malvern Instruments: Online Knowledge Base
Malvern Instruments makes you register before you can even see what they offer in their Applications Library, but if you take the time you'll be rewarded with 769 white papers. The Malvern website also offers on-demand multimedia presentations, podcasts, e-learning opportunities, user training and web seminars. In addition to English, some content is available in other languages such as German, Italian and Portuguese. You can preview one of Malvern's white papers before you take the trouble to register on their website. Go to 10 ways to Control Rheology by changing Particle Properties right here on the News Center.

A Standard by which Companies Are Judged
In a recent news release, Joe Lewis cites a 1922 white paper by Winston Churchill as the first instance of a white paper. Another source points to lengthy 19th century Blue Papers published by the British government and presented to Parliament wrapped in a blue cover. Shorter position papers were published with white rather than blue covers. Soon the name white paper became associated with any brief, well-focused background report. Americans adopted the term during World War II to apply to government and business reports.

But it wasn't until the 1990s and the growth of the Internet that white papers came to play an increasingly important role in business. For today's engineers white papers have become one of the most fruitful places to find practical process knowledge. And for those selling to process engineers, well written white papers are now a standard by which companies are judged to be serious players in the industry.

Don Dunnington
Blog Moderator

To help processors capture greater material cost savings while assuring product quality, the K-Tron Process Group recently unveiled its improved Feed Smart Deluxe Recipe Optimizer, a Microsoft Excel workbook (available as a free download) that helps processors calculate the potential savings hidden in their current process recipes.

The expanded and enhanced FeedSmart Deluxe adds a new level of functionality for processors wishing to minimize ingredient costs, evaluate options, and make the best possible decision when it comes time to purchase a new feeding system. The program lets you quickly compute the lowest possible recipe cost for every blend, formulation or compound, plus you can calculate additional savings that result from improved feeder accuracy. 

A Seminar Just for Pharmaceutical Process Engineers
Like all manufacturers, the search for greater productivity in the pharmaceutical sector has been driven largely by global competition and economic conditions. But their drive for process innovation may be further intensified by political pressure in many countries to do something to reduce mounting health care costs across the board.

In response to the industry’s growing interest in process improvement, a group of process equipment manufacturers have been sponsoring free seminars in for process engineers in the pharmaceutical industry. “Innovations in Pharmaceutical Processing” is produced by the K-Tron Process Group in collaboration with Leistritz, Howorth Air Technology, Inc, Hosokawa Micron Powder Systems, and Quadro Engineering Corp.

Seminars have been held in major pharmaceutical processing regions around the world. I recently attended one in King of Prussia, near Philadelphia, PA. Presentations covered key topics of design in pharmaceutical processing, such as containment, continuous processing using twin screw extrusion, pneumatic conveying, milling, sieving, screening and size reduction, continuous blending, active freeze drying of products and ingredients, and feeding options for a variety of applications.

Processing Seminar Travels to California
The next stop for the pharmaceutical seminars is California--September 22, 2009, in Santa Ana, CA and September 24, 2009, in San Francisco. The seminar offers pharmaceutical processors detailed process and analytical information about important  topics and trends in the industry.

The seminar organizers have put together an objective technical overview on how to improve current operations and take advantage of new technologies, such as lubricant feeding of the modern tablet press illustrated above. You can register online for the seminar, which has been developed to meet the information needs of scientists, engineers, production and manufacturing personnel, researchers, formulation scientists, product development and process transfer personnel.

Don Dunnington
Blog Moderator