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Monitoring Blending of Pharmaceutical Powders with Multipoint NIR Spectroscopy

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Abstract

Blending of powders is a crucial step in the production of pharmaceutical solid dosage forms. The active pharmaceutical ingredient (API) is often a powder that is blended with other powders (excipients) in order to produce tablets. The blending efficiency is influenced by several external factors, such as the desired degree of homogeneity and the required blending time, which mainly depend on the properties of the blended materials and on the geometry of the blender. This experimental study investigates the mixing behavior of acetyl salicylic acid as an API and α-lactose monohydrate as an excipient for different filling orders and filling levels in a blender. A multiple near-infrared probe setup on a laboratory-scale blender is used to observe the powder composition quasi-simultaneously and in-line in up to six different positions of the blender. Partial least squares regression modeling was used for a quantitative analysis of the powder compositions in the different measurement positions. The end point for the investigated mixtures and measurement positions was determined via moving block standard deviation. Observing blending in different positions helped to detect good and poor mixing positions inside the blender that are affected by convective and diffusive mixing.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Research Center Pharmaceutical Engineering GmbH, Graz, Austria

    Otto Scheibelhofer, Nikolaus Balak, Patrick R. Wahl, Daniel M. Koller & Johannes. G. Khinast

  2. Department of Chemical and Biochemical Engineering, Rutgers University, Piscataway, New Jersey, USA

    Benjamin J. Glasser

  3. Institute for Particle and Process Engineering, Graz University of Technology, Inffeldgasse 21a, 8010, Graz, Austria

    Johannes. G. Khinast

Authors
  1. Otto Scheibelhofer
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  2. Nikolaus Balak
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  3. Patrick R. Wahl
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  4. Daniel M. Koller
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  5. Benjamin J. Glasser
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  6. Johannes. G. Khinast
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Correspondence to Johannes. G. Khinast.

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Scheibelhofer, O., Balak, N., Wahl, P.R. et al. Monitoring Blending of Pharmaceutical Powders with Multipoint NIR Spectroscopy. AAPS PharmSciTech 14, 234–244 (2013). https://doi.org/10.1208/s12249-012-9910-4

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1208/s12249-012-9910-4

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