Modelling the dissolution of structured particle for enhance wash performance

Abstract

A growing amount of soluble materials (granules, tablets or pellets) are commonly used in the daily life. The dissolution process* of these materials is a complex sequence of physical and chemical transformations, however they sometimes happen simultaneously. This fact increases the difficulty of studying this phenomenon.
Procter and Gamble, P&G, (sponsor of this project) is well-known for producing the best quality soluble materials such as washing powder. The main aim of this work is studying the role of granule structure in the dissolution behaviour of washing powder. This knowledge would allow us to predict how today’s particles dissolve and to design detergents with defined release components.
The evolution of imagining technics like X-ray tomography lets researchers visualise and characterise (pore size, fraction of each component, location of these components, etc.). Combining X-ray tomography and dissolution kinetics technics (the study of chemical and physical reaction rates), we have analysed the dissolution performance of intermediate products of detergent granules. The effect of pores size and location as well as components size and location has been correlated with dissolution kinetics.