Monty Reed

Biography

Throughout Monty’s studies he received the Head of School Excellence Scholarship due to his A-level results. Within the MEng course, he was part of a team that designed a chlorine manufacturing plant, and was specifically responsible for designing the drying tower. For his master’s research project, Monty was involved in the development of an online multiphase flow meter, looking at a method of stabilising the differential pressure measurement. Monty also completed a summer internship at Atkins, working on a nuclear new-build site, as well as a summer research project looking at the tribological properties of ionic liquids.

PhD: Development of a mechanistic framework to enable smart manufacturing of spray dried APIs

Spray drying is an important continuous manufacturing technology which is used extensively across many manufacturing sectors. The ability to employ these processes in an advanced, automated, manufacturing framework (Industry 4.0/Smart Manufacturing) relies on a detailed fundamental product and process understanding captured by underpinning models as well as an understanding of relevant process and product measurement metrics. This project aims to develop these underpinning models by linking fundamental mechanistic understanding to effects on critical quality attributes: crystallinity, particle size distributions, particle morphology, residual solvent content etc., and consequently to generate the foundations of predictive tools that can be used for scale-up and manufacturing. The mechanistic understanding will be developed on the bench/lab-scale and subsequent models will be tested across scales, from bench to pilot.
The project will focus on API (Active Pharmaceutical Ingredient) applications and use model systems to develop broadly applicable understanding and models. In pharmaceutical terms the project is the development and application of PAT (Process Analytical Technology) to the spray drying process.

Outreach, training and other activities:

• Student Helper at ChemEng UK Day 2018 (hosted by University of Leeds)

Masters research project in year 1 of CDT:

• ‘Design of co-precipitation processes for the production of highly soluble solid dispersions for food and pharmaceutical applications’ with Dr Elena Simone, Food Science & Nutrition.