Solidsmixing or solids blending is the operation by which two or more solid materials in particulate form are scattered randomly in a mixer among each other by the random movement of the particles. It has long been one of the most widely used industrial, agricultural, and pharmaceutical processes. However, it has been much less developed both theoretically and practically compared to other processes. Therefore, the practice of art often dominates in the operation and design of the mixing equipment and in the assessment of quality of a mixture. The rapid growth of other process industries has made solids mixing a well recognizedbut not yet well developed operation. A considerable amount

A Markov chain model was used to model the axial mixing of solid particles in a motionless mixer having no moving parts. One step transition probabilities were determined experimentally for the model. Based on these transition probabilities, the model was able to predict spatial distribution of tracer particles up to seven steps of the Markov chain, which was equivalent to seven consecutive passes of the mixture through the mixer. Experimental results were in good agreement with those predicted from the Markov chain model.

At present corn is graded organoleptically into “normal” and various “off‐odor” categories. The possibility of classifying corn odor on the basis of gas chromatographic patterns of headspace volatiles was studied using 60 samples of corn and statistical step‐wise discriminant and regression analyses. Three options for subdividing the patterns into variables and several transformations for quantitation of peak areas were explored. To obtain optimum odor classification, five to seven gas chromatographic features were necessary. When applied to additional samples, classification at an error probability P < 0.05 (above 95% confidence level) was obtained for some statistical models. Thus, an objective system is feasible for classification of grain odor.

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