The ingredients to make a pharmaceutical tablet will include the active pharmaceutical ingredients [API], and may require a bulking or binding agent which allows the tablet to be sufficiently large for consumption and provides sufficient surface properties of the particles within the mixture to facilitate suitable agglomeration for proper mixing and tableting, these ingredients are known as excipients.
Tablets used for medication often require a precise quantity of API and as such, an evenly distributed or ‘homogenous’ mix throughout the stages of …show more content…
Each powder mixture has unique characteristics, and so have a unique optimization curve to achieve an acceptable state of uniformity and particle size distribution.
Many blending units are available which offer differing shear, convective and dispersion properties on the powder bed. Convective forces refer to large groups of particles moving in an orthogonal direction to the axis of rotation. Dispersion is random motion of particles due to collisions, usually parallel to the axis of rotation, and shear forces separate particles that may have agglomerated due to surface characteristics of the …show more content…
This decreases the risk of segregation and also minimises delays and operator contact that could be hazardous or contaminate the mixture. The design shown in Figure 3 is of a square pyramidal shaped bin or tote, which can be lifted on a vertical shaft and rotated on a horizontal or slightly angled axis. The bin is filled or ‘charged’ on the square face, and after blending, can be raised or lowered and removed for discharging at the apex of the