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INTRODUCTION

Continuous Manufacturing Technology continues to gain importance in pharmaceutical manufacturing.

While the actual granulation and tableting steps within a continuous process have great similarity with traditional processes, the major difference lies in the feeding and mixing of the ingredients, as well as in the inline monitoring of the blend uniformity. This article aims to identify the specific requirements resulting from these differences.

Typical continuous dry processing lines consists of a primary feeding and blending unit, a roller compactor, a secondary feeding and blending unit for the addition of extragranular ingredients and a tablet press. The content of active ingredient in the powder blend is usually monitored by NIR measurement.

FEEDING

The initial step of the continuous process is feeding the individual ingredients into a continuous blender.
A typical tablet formulation consists of at least one API, a filler/binder, a dis ...