Monday, December 7, 2020

Advantage of granules over powders

The major advantage of granules over powder is that the granules are free-flowing, it increases compressibility, content uniformity and it can be used for the preparation of tablets and can enclose in capsules.

Pharmaceutical powders and granules both are orally administered solid dosage form of medicaments; they are convenient forms in which drugs have to be dispensed with a large dose. Currently, only a few drugs are formulated in the form of granules or powders, typically they have taken as it is or with water in which they are readily dispersible and dissolve easily than tablets or capsules as a result of the wide surface area given by the small powder particles and the high solubility of the other ingredients or excipients used in the formulation.
Advantage of granules over powder:
  • To prepare a tablet and some other medication the granules are more preferred than pharmaceutical powders since it flows more uniformly and more freely.
  • Granules increase compressibility as compared with powder.
  • The granules have particle-size uniformity, thus it has relatively more content uniformity than the powder.
  • As compared to the pharmaceutical powders the granules are easily wetted by a solvent, this is the reason the granules are more preferred to make a solution.
  • During the production process, granules eliminate or control dust in the pharmaceutical industry.
  • Granules have good compressibility than the powder.
  • Different types of granules such as effervescent granules, coated granules, gastro-resistant granules, and modified-release granules can formulate for medication, but the powder has certain limitations.
  • Tablets prepared by granules are always more ideal for coating than the tablets prepared by powder compression.
  • As compared with powder the granules have a smaller surface area which makes them physically and chemically more stable against atmospheric conditions such as humidity, light, and temperature, etc.
  • The granules can be prepared by the dry granulation or wet granulation methods which are suitable for both sensitive and non-sensitive active pharmaceutical ingredients (API) /excipients to moisture.
  • Granules are ideal to formulate tablet as sustained release, controlled release, and extended release.  
Commonly asked questions on dosage forms are as follows.

How many types of tablet coating equipment are there?
Depending on the working principle, three types of machines are used for tablet coatings such as standard coating pans, perforated coating pans, and fluidized bed coaters.

What is the difference between powders and granules?
The difference between powders and granules is that the pharmaceutical powder is the fine particles to which any material is reduced by pounding, grinding, or crushing, while the granule is a small grain, while granules are also solid oral dosage formulations consisting of dry aggregates of powder particles containing one or more pharmaceutical items, with or without other ingredients or excipients.

What are the methods of determining particle size?
Sieving, microscopy, sedimentation, light scattering, laser holography, and cascade impactor are the methods that are used to determine particle size.

What is the classification of powders?
They are broadly classified into different classes such as bulk powders for external use, bulk powders for internal use, simple and compound powders for internal use, powder enclosed in cachets and capsules, and compressed powder (tablets).


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