Pharmaceutical Melt Granulation with Radial Gas Cooling
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Solution Overview
Problem
Existing methods for producing pharmaceutical granules from melt materials face challenges in achieving uniform size and shape, particularly at high throughput rates, due to poor cooling and clogging issues in hot cutting systems, which result in irregularly shaped granules and low efficiency.
Innovation Solution
A method involving a knife arrangement with a motor-driven knife sweeping over nozzles in a perforated plate, surrounded by a housing through which a gaseous cooling medium flows radially inward, ensuring effective cooling and separation of granules, preventing clumping, and using a control device to optimize the flow and throughput of the cooling medium for uniform granule formation.
Engineering Contradictions & Design Principles
Engineering Contradiction Analysis
1Productivity
If hot cutting systems are used for granulating pharmaceutical melt material, then granules can be produced, but the knives overheat and stick together, and granules clump and clog at high throughput rates
Solution Approach 1:
The patent introduces a gas stream (pneumatic system) flowing through the housing to serve dual purposes: cooling the knives preventing overheating and sticking, and simultaneously transporting granules away from the cutting zone to prevent clumping and clogging. This pneumatic approach resolves the reliability issues at high throughput rates while maintaining high productivity.
Solution Approach 2:
The gas stream acts as an intermediary substance between the knives and the environment, and between the granules and the housing. It mediates heat transfer from knives to the gas, and mediates granule transport from the cutting zone to the outlet, preventing direct contact that would cause sticking and clumping.
2Ease of manufacture
If knives rotate close to the surface to chop melt strands into granules, then granulation occurs, but air is sucked in that directs granules centrifugally away, causing poor knife cooling and granule transport issues
Solution Approach 1:
Instead of relying on air suction created by knife rotation to transport granules (which causes poor cooling), the patent inverts the approach by actively supplying a gas stream in the opposite direction - flowing through the housing to provide both cooling and granule transport, eliminating the harmful air suction effect.
3Productivity
If large quantities of granules are produced at high throughput rates, then productivity increases, but granules tend to clump and stick together, and uniform spherical shape is difficult to achieve
Solution Approach 1:
The patent establishes continuous gas stream flow through the housing that continuously cools and transports granules as they are formed. This continuous action prevents intermittent clumping and ensures uniform spherical shape even at high throughput rates, maintaining manufacturing precision while maximizing productivity.
Applied Scientific Principles
This section explains which scientific principles are used to turn an abstract innovation direction into a practical engineering solution.
Function Achieved in This Case
This method enables the production of large quantities of uniformly sized spherical granules by maintaining sufficient cooling and flow, preventing clumping, and ensuring high specific throughput, even at high production rates, while maintaining the moisture sensitivity of pharmaceutical materials.
Implementation Method 1
a housing (6) being provided which connects to the perforated plate (2), surrounds at least one knife (3) of the knife arrangement and is flowed through by a cooling medium, so that the granules are solidified in the cooling medium
Implementation Method 2
the cooling medium and the granules located therein are fed to an outlet (7) in the housing (6), whereby the cooling medium is a gaseous cooling medium... a centripetal or at least essentially centripetal flow of the cooling medium being formed at least in the rotation area
Data Source
AI summary
The invention relates to a method for producing pharmaceutical products from a melt material, wherein the melt material emerges from nozzles in a perforated plate and is then granulated, and wherein a blade arrangement having at least one blade, which is driven by a motor, is disposed opposite the perforated plate, so that the at least one blade passes over the nozzles in the perforated plate and in so doing cuts off granules of the emerging melt material. A housing is provided which is connected to the perforated plate, and at least surrounds the at least one blade of the blade arrangement, wherein a cooling medium flows through said housing, so that the granules of melt material are solidified in the cooling medium which is introduced radially inwards, or substantially radially inwards, from outside all across the circumference from an inflow device formed by a separate inflow chamber, which surrounds the circumference of the housing in the range of rotation of the at least one blade, and from a circumferentially disposed inflow nozzle arrangement between the inflow chamber and the housing. A centripetal or at least substantially centripetal flow of the cooling medium is formed at least in the range of rotation, and furthermore the cooling medium and the granules located therein are fed to an outlet in the housing, wherein the cooling medium is a gaseous cooling medium.