Solids/granular processing is an essential component of a 
wide variety of industrial operations. Examples include 
drying of food grains, coating of pharmaceutical tablets, 
mixing of powders and size reduction of granules etc. 
Despite their widespread use, solids processes are often 
poorly understood. As a result, they are almost always 
operated inefficiently with a heavy reliance on 
empiricism, resulting in wastage of resources in terms of 
time, energy, human and monetary.

In this webinar, we present a class of “smart” 
computational models - based on the discrete element 
modeling (DEM) technique - that enable solids processes 
to be understood better. The relative robustness of the 
DEM technique enables process engineers with little to no 
computational modeling experience to easily run computer 
simulations of their complex solids processes. Given the 
relatively shallow learning curve, engineers can spend 
their time in benefically analysing results and getting 
better physical insight - instead of getting entangled in 
computational and numerical issues.

We will introduce SmartDEM, a DEM simulation environment 
developed by Tridiagonal Solutions Inc. using open source 
solvers. We will present industrial examples where 
SmartDEM has been successfully used to gain beneficial 
insight into solids processes. These examples cover a 
range of typical solids operations - coating, drying, 
mixing and flow of granular material with reactions - and 
should be interesting to many engineers.