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Mitigation of Tribocharging in Pharmaceutical Powders using Surface Modified V-Blenders

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Abstract

Introduction

The pharmaceutical industry involves handling of powders on a large scale for manufacturing of solid dosage forms such as tablets and capsules constituting about 85% of the dosage forms. During this manufacturing process, powders get electrostatically charged due to numerous particle–particle and particle-equipment wall collisions. Most of the pharmaceutical powders are insulators in nature and they accumulate charge for longer durations making it difficult to dissipate the generated charge. In this study, a surface modified blender has been used to analyze tribocharging in pharmaceutical powders.

Methods

The surface modified blender has been fabricated using two types of materials, an insulator, and a conductor. The conductor or the metal arm induces charge of opposite polarity to that of the charge induced by the insulator arm and the overall charge on the powder decreases during the tumbling motion of the blender. Ibuprofen was used as the model drug and processed in aluminum, polyvinyl chloride (PVC), stainless steel, surface modified aluminum-PVC (Al-PVC) and surface modified stainless steel- PVC (SS-PVC) blender at 20% RH for different blending times such as 2, 10, 20, 30 and 40 min. To better understand the tribocharging phenomenon in surface modified V blenders, an experimentally validated computational model was developed using Discrete Element Method (DEM) modeling.

Results

Significant reduction (> 50%) in electrostatic charge was observed for Ibuprofen using surface modified blenders in comparison to metal only and insulator only V blenders. Additionally, an identical charging trend was observed between the simulation and experimental data. 

Conclusion

It was established that careful selection of equipment materials could significantly reduce the electrostatic charging of pharmaceutical powders and DEM model could be a really useful tool in assessing the applicability of the modified V blenders.

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Acknowledgements

Authors would like to sincerely thank Professor Julian A. Norato from the Mechanical Engineering Department at the University of Connecticut for providing the access to Altair EDEM. We would also like to thank Scott Laforest from University of Connecticut machine shop for helping us fabricate the V blenders. A special thanks to Daniel Sniffin from High performance computing (HPC) at the University of Connecticut for helping us perform the simulations and troubleshooting.

Funding

This study was supported by the University of Connecticut START Preliminary Proof of Concept Fund.

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Pharmaceutical Sciences, University of Connecticut, Storrs, CT, USA

    Tanu Mehta, Raj Mukherjee, Ami Shah, Tibo Duran & Bodhisattwa Chaudhuri

  2. Department of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering, University of Connecticut, Storrs, CT, USA

    Trey Mastriani & Bodhisattwa Chaudhuri

  3. Institute of Material Sciences, University of Connecticut, Storrs, CT, USA

    Bodhisattwa Chaudhuri

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  1. Tanu Mehta
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  2. Raj Mukherjee
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Correspondence to Bodhisattwa Chaudhuri.

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Mehta, T., Mukherjee, R., Shah, A. et al. Mitigation of Tribocharging in Pharmaceutical Powders using Surface Modified V-Blenders. Pharm Res 40, 2371–2381 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11095-023-03612-y

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11095-023-03612-y

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