Particle movement in the spheronizer – Experimental investigations with respect to the toroidal and poloidal direction
![Particle movement in the spheronizer – Experimental investigations with respect to the toroidal and poloidal direction](https://www.pharmaexcipients.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/05/Particle-movement-in-the-spheronizer-–-Experimental-investigations-with-respect-to-the-toroidal-and-poloidal-direction.jpg)
Oberservation of particle movement during wet granulation is crucial for identifying granulation mechanisms, process optimizations and troubleshooting. An example of such a process is spheronization, which is commonly used as a wet granulation technique to produce spherical, pharmaceutical pellets. Due to the dense particle bed, measurements of poloidal pellet velocities remain a challenge and have not been yet been reported in literature.
Highlights
• experimental measurement of movements in a dense particle bed is possible.
• simulations provide acceptable representations of movement in a spheronizer.
• Average pellet velocities in a spheronizer are dependent on the plate diameter.
In this work, a modelling approach was used in combination with particle image velocimetry (PIV) and mixing progress as a surrogate parameter to obtain information about the movement inside the pellet bed, including those parts not visible from outside the pellet bed.
A good agreement between the experiment and the simulation was found. Regions of low poloidal velocities were found in both experiments and simulations. The initial pellet shape was not identified as a significant influence on the mixing progress.
About this article: Maria Evers, Dominik Weis, Sergiy Antonyuk, Markus Thommes, Particle movement in the spheronizer – Experimental investigations with respect to the toroidal and poloidal direction, Powder Technology, 2022, 117452, ISSN 0032-5910, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.powtec.2022.117452. (https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0032591022003461)