화학공학소재연구정보센터
Powder Technology, Vol.379, 345-361, 2021
Mechanism of inter-tablet coating variability: Investigation about the motion behavior of ellipsoidal tablets in a pan coater
In this paper, the coating process of tablets is investigated based on the discrete element method (DEM), where tablets are modeled by super-ellipsoids and the spray droplets are simulated by the discrete droplet method (DDM). Via coupling of DEM-DDM, the coating process of ellipsoidal tablets can be simulated efficiently. Based on simulations results, the influence of droplet diameter on the computational efficiency of DEM-DDM and coating uniformity are analyzed. Moreover, the mechanism of how the motion of tablets affects the coating uniformity has been studied in this paper, and it has been found that enhancing the diffusion motion in spraying direction is the key to improve the coating uniformity of tablets. By ameliorating the internal structure of the pan coater, the movement of the tablets in the spraying direction is enhanced, and the uniformity of the tablets in the pan coater is effectively improved. (C) 2020 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.