Continuous wet granulation and fluid-bed drying – An experimental investigation of a new revolutionary system

Continuous wet granulation and drying have long been a hot topic in pharmaceutical research and development (R&D) and industry. However, there is no truly continuous fluid–bed dryer on the market that is suitable for a long process time and that meets the quality requirements described in the present article. This article outlines the experimental testing on a new R&D system (QbCon® 1) for truly continuous granulation and drying. Special attention is paid to the dryer and the resulting granules.

The results show that very narrow and reproducible residence time distributions are achieved in the dryer, which leads to uniform drying of the granules of different size classes. The process delivers consistent quality regarding moisture and particle size of the granules over several hours. When changing the conveying speed of the granules in the dryer while maintaining all other parameters, it was possible to describe the limits for a fixed process/formulation combination, which depends mainly on the depth of the fluid bed.

The possibility to follow the process in–line, makes the QbCon® 1, with its innovative drying process, an ideal device for the introduction of continuous wet granulation.

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