A quantitative comparison of in-line coating thickness distributions obtained from a pharmaceutical tablet mixing process using discrete element method and terahertz pulsed imaging

Pei, Chunlei and Lin, Hungyen and Markl, Daniel and Shen, Yaochun and Zeitler, J. Axel and Elliott, James A. (2018) A quantitative comparison of in-line coating thickness distributions obtained from a pharmaceutical tablet mixing process using discrete element method and terahertz pulsed imaging. Chemical Engineering Science, 192. pp. 34-45. ISSN 0009-2509

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Abstract

The application of terahertz pulsed imaging (TPI) in the in-line configuration to monitor the coating thickness distribution of pharmaceutical tablets has the potential to improve the performance and quality of the spray coating process. In this study, an in-line TPI method is used to measure coating thickness distributions on pre-coated tablets during mixing in a rotating pan, and compared with results obtained numerically using the discrete element method (DEM) combined with a ray-tracing technique. The hit rates (i.e. the number of successful coating thickness measurements per minute) obtained from both terahertz in-line experiments and the DEM/ray-tracing simulations are in good agreement, and both increase with the number of baffles in the mixing pan. We demonstrate that the coating thickness variability as determined from the ray-traced data and the terahertz in-line measurements represents mainly the intra-tablet variability due to relatively uniform mean coating thickness across tablets. The mean coating thickness of the ray-traced data from the numerical simulations agrees well with the mean coating thickness as determined by the off-line TPI measurements. The mean coating thickness of in-line TPI measurements is slightly higher than that of off-line measurements. This discrepancy can be corrected based on the cap-to-band surface area ratio of the tablet and the cap-to-band sampling ratio obtained from ray-tracing simulations: the corrected mean coating thickness of the in-line TPI measurements shows a better agreement with that of off-line measurements.

Item Type:
Journal Article
Journal or Publication Title:
Chemical Engineering Science
Additional Information:
This is the author’s version of a work that was accepted for publication in Chemical Engineering Science. Changes resulting from the publishing process, such as peer review, editing, corrections, structural formatting, and other quality control mechanisms may not be reflected in this document. Changes may have been made to this work since it was submitted for publication. A definitive version was subsequently published in Chemical Engineering Science, 192, 2018 DOI: 10.1016/j.ces.2018.06.045
Uncontrolled Keywords:
/dk/atira/pure/subjectarea/asjc/2200/2209
Subjects:
?? CHEMICAL ENGINEERING(ALL)CHEMISTRY(ALL)APPLIED MATHEMATICSINDUSTRIAL AND MANUFACTURING ENGINEERING ??
ID Code:
126005
Deposited By:
Deposited On:
20 Jun 2018 09:12
Refereed?:
Yes
Published?:
Published
Last Modified:
18 Sep 2023 01:23