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Friday, September 18, 2020

Factors affecting granulation process

Granulation is the process of particle enlargement by the agglomeration method. It is the most important unit operations in the manufacturing of pharmaceutical dosage forms, particularly for tablets and capsules. The granulation has two types such as wet granulation and dry granulation. In wet granulation that uses a granulation liquid in the process and dry granulation does not use the liquid. The type of process is selected based on the physicochemical properties of drugs, excipients, essential flow, and release properties.
The granulation method converts fine powder into free-flowing granules, dust-free granules which are easy to compress. However, due to the high-quality requirement of the formed granules, granulation has various challenges such as uniformity of material and physicochemical properties such as porosity, bulk density, size of granule, compressibility, moisture, and hardness, etc.
Here are mentioned some factors that affect the granulation process.
  • Compatibility between material and binding solvents such as particle size, hydrophobicity, compressibility, solubility in granulation liquid, and surface area
  • Packing properties of the solids
  • Selection of excipients, since the role of excipients, is important in the granulation process
  • The quality of the machine that is used in the process
  • Stirring speed for the method: it used according to the raw material characteristics and requirement of the finished product
  • Particle shape and surface morphology
  • The solubility of particles in the granulation liquid
  • Characteristics of the drug, excipients, and other material which is used in the process
  • The contact angle of the binder liquid to the solids
  • Mean particle size and size distribution of the solids

Commonly asked questions on granulation are as follows.

What is the advantage of granulation?
The major advantage of granulation includes it increases flowability, suitable for most compounds, and suitable for different types of dissolution rates.

What are the two types of granulation?
Wet granulation and dry granulation are types of granulation. 

What is the application of the granulation technique?
The granulation is commonly applied in pharmaceutical industries for the enlargement of granules by the agglomeration technique.

What is the difference between dry and wet granulation?
The major difference between dry and wet granulation is that wet granulation uses a granulation liquid in the process while dry granulation does not use the liquid.

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