Extrusion & Spherionisation
An OSD alternative to compacted tablet manufacture is the production of granules and insertion into capsules. The process involves mixing of powder materials and a liquid binder into a paste, extruding this paste into spaghetti like fibres, which are then broken up and transformed into spherical-like granules in the spheroniser.
The first step is to develop a paste from the powder mixture formulation which can be extruded. The Mixer - Torque Rheometer allows measurement of the paste rheometry from dry powder to final paste. The rheology can be determined in terms of the amount of binder added and the time of mixing to optimise the paste formulation.
Extrusion can be performed using a single screw or a radial extruder, depending on the amount of material available. A small single screw extruder is available for samples from 5g. Once the extrudate is completed it is spheronised in the rotating bowl. Three different sizes of bowls are available to utilise depending on the amount of material available that has been extruded.
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