Multipurpose equipment for drying, granulating and coating

摘要

Fluid bed processing has been a well known and established technology in the pharmaceutical industry for more than 50 years. Originally only used to dry product after wet granulation, it has subsequently replaced classical oven drying in pharmaceutical manufacturing. Today, fluid bed drying is still considered to be the state-of-the-art of pharmaceutical drying processes. With the additional implementation of spray nozzles, fluid bed dryers have now become fluid bed granulators as well, enabling wet granulation to be effectively done in a single, discrete device. In these applications, the nozzles are mounted on the top of the vessel to spray liquids or suspensions onto wet particles (top spray). Further developments saw the same apparatus being use to coat tablets or other particles with an additional insert, whereby the spray nozzles were placed at the bottom of the fluid bed vessel (bottom spray).