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Pharmaceutica Analytica Acta | Volume: 09
September 20-22, 2018 Prague, Czech Republic
Pharmaceutics & Drug Delivery Systems
17
th
Annual Congress on
Pharm Anal Acta 2018, Volume: 9
DOI: 10.4172/2153-2435-C2-037
Evaluation of the residence time during dry, wet and hot melt granulation
Gavin M Walker
and
Ahmad B Albadarin
University of Limerick, Ireland
T
win screw extrusion offers a promising method to continuously process and transform physicochemical properties of
pharmaceuticals and excipients and produce tailored products given its accurate control of process parameters. Certainly, one
of the strengths of continuous manufacturing is the consistency in maintaining a certain product quality. In order to maintain such
consistency, it is necessary to process feed materials for an optimized controllable time, also known as the residence time. The
residence time is a parameter characterizing the duration for a single particle to partake in the extrusion process. As a result, the
residence time and its associated distribution are parameters highly affecting the quality of output products. Additionally, if an
existing process is desired to be scaled up or a process transfer scheduled to an extruder with different geometries, evaluation and
comparison of residence times of both processes will be useful given its relative ease of measurement. As the residence time is a
result of mass flow and mixing patterns within the extruder, it is highly dependent on process variables, such as feeder flowrate,
extruder screw design and configuration and material properties. The purpose of the present study is to, study the effects of the feeder
input mass flowrate on the residence time distribution and to investigate the effects of material properties on the residence time by
investigating different materials under the same processing conditions during wet granulation and hot melt extrusion (HME). Based
on experimental data obtained from residence time distribution curves for wet and dry granulation, at steady state it appears that
the feeder flowrate plays significant role in the residence time distribution obtained but the degree of influence is strongly dependent
on the rotation speed of the extruder and the material properties. Positive changes in peak height and negative changes in residence
times are observed with an increase in feeder flowrate.
Gavin.Walker@ul.ie