EvoPhase will use an AI-led ‘evolutionary design’ approach that is applicable to a diverse range of equipment, across many industries.
EvoPhase founders (left to right): Chief Operating Officer Jack Sykes, Chief Executive Officer Dominik Werner, Chief Technology Officer Leonard Nicusan, and Chief Scientific Officer Dr Kit Windows-Yule are all from Birmingham's School of Chemical Engineering
University of Birmingham Enterprise announces the launch of EvoPhase, which delivers services to optimise existing and new process equipment that mixes, blends, stores, or stirs granular materials.
EvoPhase will use evolutionary AI algorithms, coupled with simulations of particulates in systems such as industrial mixers, to evolve an optimised design for the mixing blade, and the shape or size of the blending vessel.
This AI-led ‘evolutionary design’ approach is applicable to a diverse range of process equipment, including mills, dryers, roasters, coaters, fluidised beds, stirred tanks and is expected to produce huge cost and energy savings for industry.
Our technologies enable us to undertake assignments in material characterisation, digital model development, experimental imaging and validation, optimisation of process conditions, geometric design optimisation and scale-up, and predictive model development. Our approach is suitable for designing powder, granule and fluid processing equipment across all industries, where it will deliver cost savings by increasing energy efficiency, mixing effectiveness and throughput.
Founders Chief Executive Officer Dominik Werner, Chief Technology Officer Leonard Nicusan, Chief Operating Officer Jack Sykes, and Chief Scientific Officer Dr Kit Windows-Yule, are from Birmingham’s School of Chemical Engineering. All four are highly experienced in digital models and simulations of industrial processes, and their combined expertise will enable EvoPhase to address challenges that traditional R&D methods struggle to resolve.
Up to 50% of the world’s products are created by processes that use granular materials, but granules are difficult to characterise or understand. If you consider coffee, its granules are solid when they are contained, like a liquid-like when poured out of the container, and become gas-like and dispersed if you blow on them. This type of variability means granules are the most complex form of matter to process.
The team will use a novel AI technology called Highly-Autonomous Rapid Prototyping for Particulate Processes (HARPPP), which works like natural selection, testing out designs it has evolved to come up with to find the best one. It allows the user to set multiple parameters for optimisation, allowing evolution of a design that will meet, for instance, targets on power draw, throughput and mixing rate, rather than trading these parameters off against each other.1
EvoPhase will also use a numerical method called DEM (Discrete Element Method) which predicts the behaviours of granular materials by computing the movement of all particles. These computations can be validated using Positron Emission Particle Tracking (PEPT), another technique invented at Birmingham, which is a variant of the medical imaging technique positron emission tomography (PET).
Leonard Nicusan said: “Our technologies enable us to undertake assignments in material characterisation, digital model development, experimental imaging and validation, optimisation of process conditions, geometric design optimisation and scale-up, and predictive model development. Our approach is suitable for designing powder, granule and fluid processing equipment across all industries, where it will deliver cost savings by increasing energy efficiency, mixing effectiveness and throughput.”
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For media information contact Ruth Ashton, University of Birmingham Enterprise, email: r.c.ashton@bham.ac.uk
For further information about EvoPhase’s services, use the contact form on the EvoPhase website.
About the University of Birmingham
The University of Birmingham is ranked amongst the world’s top 100 institutions, and its work brings people from across the world to Birmingham, including researchers and teachers and more than 6,500 international students from nearly 150 countries.
University of Birmingham Enterprise helps researchers turn their ideas into new services, products and enterprises that meet real-world needs. We also provide incubation, and support innovators and entrepreneurs with mentoring, advice, and training, manage the University’s Academic Consultancy Service, and University of Birmingham Enterprise Operating Divisions.
Associate Professor in Chemical Engineering
Kit Windows-Yule is a Lecturer in Chemical Engineering, working jointly with the School of Physics and Astronomy's Positron Imaging Centre.
