Exploring Pharmaceutical Powder Cohesion
Understanding bulk powder flow properties is vital in pharmaceutical manufacturing to address material handling challenges and ensure consistent product quality. Cohesion, a critical factor influencing powder flow, is often measured indirectly using techniques like the angle of repose or shear cell testing. This webinar introduces the Warren Spring cohesion test, a less commonly used but innovative method in the pharmaceutical industry that directly measures powder cohesion.
The test determines powder shear strength by applying torque to a pre-compacted powder bed using a paddle with vanes, providing a unique approach without relying on normal stress. Key findings include a strong linear correlation between the measured Warren Spring cohesion strength and the paddle’s penetration force, allowing for direct comparisons across materials. Importantly, the method showed consistency, with results unaffected by pre-compaction stresses.
This research demonstrated that the Warren Spring cohesion test offers a simpler and faster approach to cohesion testing, complementing traditional tools like the Brookfield powder flow tester. While the shear cell remains more sensitive in specific situations, the Warren Spring method provides a valuable, quicker alternative for reliable powder assessments, enhancing both continuous and batch pharmaceutical manufacturing processes.
Discover how this novel methodology can improve the understanding of powder flow and drive manufacturing efficiency.
Dr. Abhishek Shetty is a Lead Scientist working at the Advanced Technical center at Anton Paar USA. Dr. Shetty received his BS degree in Chemical Engineering from National Institute of Technology Karnataka and MS and PhD from University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, USA. Dr. Shetty has over 15 years of working experience in academia, CPG and Advanced instrumentation space. He is a named inventor on 2 US patents, has published several peer-reviewed scientific journal articles which have garnered hundreds of citations and also has presented at several scientific technical conferences. As the Lead Scientist at Anton Paar, his responsibilities are to develop next generation materials characterization methods relevant to Anton Paar’s rheology portfolio. Dr. Shetty's work with teams spans across the globe to develop new advanced applications using advanced rheometric tools. His work has been featured in prestigious journals such as Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS), Science Advances, Physical Review Letters (PRL), Journal of Rheology (JOR) etc.
Sonia Modarres Razavi is an Assistant Research Professor at the NSF Engineering Research Center on Structured Organic Particulate Systems (C-SOPS) at Rutgers University.
She holds a Ph.D. in Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering from Rutgers University. Her research focuses on powder characterization, powder compaction, and pharmaceutical tablet characterization, with an emphasis on understanding the complex relationships between material properties, process settings, and final product quality. Her work is at the forefront of process development, specializing in the characterization and optimization of unit operations and how they depend on material properties. Drawing on her expertise in material characterization and unit operations, she has contributed to the transition from traditional batch manufacturing to continuous manufacturing processes. By leveraging advanced methodologies, she aims to improve efficiency, product consistency, and scalability in pharmaceutical manufacturing, enabling the production of high-quality products with reduced waste and cost.
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