Targeted granulation reduces product development costs
Mettler Toledo launches in-line measuring system
Mettler Toledo’s FBRM C35 Ex in-line granulation measurement system tracks changes to granule distribution in real-time. This enables formulators and engineers to adjust for changes in particle count and dimension during cohesive wet or dry particle processing.
Results using the FBRM C35 Ex include an improved ability to ensure targeted granule size and consistent granule distribution – both of which are especially critical in fluid-bed coating and high-shear wet granulation applications, the measurement system specialist says.
‘The FBRM C35 Ex is an important development for particle system characterisation in a variety of manufacturing environments because it helps formulators and engineers seamlessly scale-up granulation batches from lab-scale to pilot-scale, and then from pilot-scale to production,’ said Eric Hukkanen, product manager at Mettler Toledo.
‘The Ex model is also ideal for granulation environments that require ATEX gas and dust certification.’
The FBRM C35 Ex provides Quality by Design (QbD) inline measurement throughout product development, scale-up and manufacturing. Users can identify a distribution that corresponds to the ideal batch end-point. Real-time distribution can then be tracked relative to this targeted end-point to ensure consistent downstream particle flow. Monitoring trends lets engineers and formulators identify and troubleshoot unexpected changes. This helps minimise batch failures and improve yield while ensuring smoother scale-up and technology transfer, the company says.
The FBRM C35 series enables formulation scientists and engineers quickly to correlate particle system dynamics to processing conditions while running fewer experiments. This helps improve time-to-market by ensuring downstream particle flow as well as consistent tablet roller-compaction and subsequent dissolution results.
For manufacturing situations where view-probe window fouling is an issue, a proprietary, patent-pending scraper keeps the FBRM C35 probe window clean.
