J. Peter Clark

Mixing of solids is a widespread and important unit operation in food processing. Some mixes are products themselves, while others are preliminary steps in more complex processes.Tumbling 1-mm-diameter steel beads (dark) with 2-mm-diameter glass beads (light) results in a striped segregation pattern, not uniform mixing. Experiments were performed by Nitin Jain under the direction of Julio M. Ottino and Richard M. Lueptow at Northwestern University.

Historically, mixing of solids has been studied empirically because there seemed to be little fundamental understanding. However, this has changed relatively recently, as physicists and engineering researchers have recognized the importance of solids behavior and the intellectual challenge and satisfaction of solving pr…





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