(190h) Experimental Analysis of Operating Conditions in a High Shear Wet Granulation Process - A Population Balance Approach

Granulation has been known as the principal method to increase the particle size and modify some mechanical properties of particulate systems in different industries (e.g. pharmaceuticals, detergent, food, fertilizers, etc). This process plays an important role in the developing area of particle engineering and design.

The main objective of this research is to study the macro-scale effects of operational parameters on a batch high-shear wet granulation in order to generate and validate a mathematical model to describe the granule growth mechanism by means of a population balance approach. Laboratory-scale batch high-shear granulators are proposed to evaluate different operational conditions that affect this type of granulation: initial mean size difference for bimodal distributions, agitator velocity and binder flow rate function. Bimodal mixtures of anhydrous lactose and lactose monohydrate are used with polyvinylpyrrolidone as binder. Actually, studies on agitator velocity and initial mean size difference (d₂-d₁) are being validating and characterized.

An experimentally-based coalescence kernel will be proposed for the growth kinetics of the studied system. Galerkin hp method (Parsival®) will help to solve and simulate the transient population balance equation.