The effect of fractional charges on flow properties of direct compression tableting excipients

Flow rate and flow equation of pharmaceutical free-flowable powder excipients

Basic aspect of powder handling is powder flow which depends on mechanical properties of the solid material. This experimental work presents the results of flowability testing of the free-flowable particle size fraction of 0.0250-0.0315 cm of five powder excipients. The single-point determination of the mass flow rate from a cylindrical, flat-bottomed hopper was primarily influenced by the diameter of a circular orifice. The significant effect of the orifice height was also noted. Increasing the orifice height, the flow under gravity is directed resulting in the sudden acceleration of the flow rate. The critical zone relates to the orifice diameter. The multi-point determination of flowability employed the actual parameters of the flow equation which allows the prediction of the mass flow rate. The precision of the prediction was the basic criterion in optimization of the orifice geometry. Based on the results, the orifice height of 1.6 cm can be recommended for the correction of faster powder flow. For the slower powder flow, an orifice height of 0.2 cm can be used alternatively. In conclusion, the information about the orifice height used should be referred to whenever test the powder flowability and compare the results.

Preliminary studies of the development of a direct compression cellulose excipient from bagasse

Bagasse is an unused by-product in cane sugar manufacture. Bagasse from sugar cane manually harvested in Indonesia was transformed to pulp by mechanical means and repeated autoclaving in 1.4% NaOH. It was then subjected to cycles of bleaching with hypochlorite and acid hydrolysis with 2.5 M HCl to produce 'microcrystalline' cellulose (MCC). Extraction of waxes by petroleum ether was necessary in order to improve the disintegration properties of tablets made from this material, DICEB III. When the bagasse-derived cellulose was reconstituted by recombining different proportions of selected sieve cuts to have a similar sieve size distribution as the commercially available MCC, Avicel PH102, it was found that the latter and DICEB III also had similar crystallinity as measured by X-ray powder diffraction (degree of crystallinity 2.8 +/- 0.2). The crystallinity and flow index were also relatively insensitive to most of the changes in the manufacturing procedure, indicating that the production process was quite robust. Directly compressed tablets were made containing 50 mg of caffeine and 500 mg of either Avicel PH102 or DICEB III to approximately the same hardness (11.6 +/- 1.1 and 13.7 +/- 0.5 kPa, respectively). They displayed similar satisfactory disintegration and dissolution behavior. However, DICEB III required greater compaction pressures than Avicel PH102, perhaps because the former was not spray dried to give spherical agglomerates of particles of uniform size as the commercial product. Rather, DICEB III consisted mainly of single irregular particles. Further work is required to improve the new excipient and to explore if the bagasse from mechanically harvested sugar cane (often contaminated by soil) could also be used for production of MCC.