A novel facility to investigate dust mobilization in confined environments with applications to the security of the pharmaceutical industry

Many pharmaceutical industries all around the world are facing the problem of dust mobilization during the productive process of medicines. This mobilization can be dangerous for the safety of the operators working in the factory and for the safety of the factory itself. It is therefore necessary to develop predictive models to simulate and forecast dust mobilization. The Quantum Electronics and Plasma Physics (QEP) Research Group of the University of Rome Tor Vergata has developed a facility to experimentally replicate dust mobilization in different critical conditions in an enclosed environment. The measurements performed with diagnostics available in the facility, provide the boundary conditions to run numerical simulations and to validate mobilization models. Even if the initial field of application of this novel facility is dust mobilization is nuclear fusion, the methodology developed can be used for the medicine industry, for the agribusiness and others. The authors will present the experimental and numerical results discussing new applications.