L.B. Bohle BTC Tablet Coating Equipment

L.B. Bohle is a technological leader in the demanding process of coating pharmaceutical and nutraceutical tablets. Its well-established series of BTC Tablet Coaters have become an industry standard for efficient and effective combined spraying, mixing, drying operations in tablet manufacturing.

These machines have become synonymous for economical coating efficiency with their flat tablet bed, patented air flow system and high-performance spray guns ensuring high coating uniformity   quality results and reduced time processing.

Tablet coating methods

Tablet coating is the process where coating materials are applied to tablet surfaces to achieve additional dosage form properties, compared with uncoated tablets. Functional coating may be needed for improved taste, easier swallowing, improved tablet stability or mechanical resistance, gastric biocompatibility, delayed dosage release and additional or binary active ingredients. Therefore, coating materials may include gelatin, cellulose or other binders, titanium oxide, calcium carbonate or similar fillers, or coloring agents ranging from dyes to oxides.

Whatever its purpose, tablet coating must always combine three sub processes:

• Spraying: applying the coating in liquid form by means of spray guns and nozzles.
• Blending: Also termed ‘mixing’, this involves agitating and turning a batch of tablets inside a revolving drum to ensure full and uniform coating and prevent them sticking together (tablet twinning). Coating uniformity is usually measured by its relative standard deviation, or RSD value.
• Drying: Passing warm air through the coated tablets to cure and harden the coating.

In addition, the tablets coating machine must handle these processes under high containment to provide full operator safety when handling HPAPI highly potent active pharma ingredients.

L.B. Bohle Tablet Coating Machines

L.B. Bohle is a technology leader in the field of pharmaceutical tablet-coating applications.
All L.B. Bohle machines for tablet-coating guarantee best-of-class product processing and excellent cost effectiveness. The flat tablet bed with long drum geometry, as well as continuous adjustment of the inclination angle ensure optimal movement of the cores. The systematic compulsory guide and mixing baffles in the drum ensure continuous product movement without breaking or damage. There is no tablet twinning, therefore, there are only minor losses in solids and coatings.

The L.B. Bohle tablet coating portfolio comprises three ranges of coaters:

BFC Film Coaters: The Bohle BFC Film Coater is the high-end version of the L.B. Bohle coaters, standing out with high efficiency, optimized output, and lowest suspension loss. The range includes the BFC 5 Laboratory Coater for research scale film coating of pilot batches.

BTC Tablet-Coaters: The BTC range of tablet coating machines are optimised for economic efficiency and cost effectiveness, with flat tablet bed, outstanding air system and high spray volumes to ensure high quality and shorten process times by up to 35 percent. Their flat bed and long pan geometry of the BTC Tablet Coater, in combination with Bohle’s distinctive mixing baffles guarantee optimal flow of tablet cores and gentle handling of the tablets. By reversing the rotational direction of the pan, the tablets can be emptied out quickly and completely.

Distinctive features of the BTC Series include ultra-functional easy to clean housings, designed for ‘through-the-wall’ installation, with built-in control cabinet incorporating multi-panel display with touch panel for superior operator ergonomics. Optionally, the touch panel can be mounted remotely for maximum operator safety.

With superb coating performance, BTC tablet-coater sets industry standards and guarantees highly uniform RSD coverage and consistently excellent coating results.

KOCO® Continuous Coater: L.B. Bohle introduced KOCO® in 2011 as the first semi-continuous tablet-coater for the pharmaceutical industry. The KOCO® tablet coater is characterized by reliable throughput at consistent residence time for all tablets, while retaining the proven patented Bohle system design and features for tablet coaters. The KOCO® range includes four different models from KOCO® 25 to KOCO® 200, covering batch sizes from as low as seven liters to more than 200 liters.

Resources

Click on L.B. Bohle BTC Tablet Coaters for further details.
Click on L.B. Bohle BFC Film Coaters for further details.
Click on L.B. Bohle KOCO® Continuous Coater  for further details.
Click on Bohle Coating Technology to watch video.
Click on White Paper on Tablet Coating to access technical paper (registration required).
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