Double Cone Blender – Developer
Double Cone Blender – Developer
INTRODUCTION
The blending of powders and granulates is a very important unit operation in the Pharmaceutical Industry. The Content Uniformity (CU) of each of the components which forms the blending is reached through this operation.
Therefore, the next elaboration steps (compression, filling of capsules or pouches, etc) can be carried out without any problem and the units have the appropriate contents (diluents, binder, glidants, dyes, etc.) and in the second step the lubricant is added and the blending is extended for a few minutes more.
Features
CONCEPTION
The double cone blender DVC Developer with Exchangeable Cones has been conceived considering the three main blending variables: geometry of the containers, equipment filling or loading level, and bleding speed.
DVC Developer is composed by a mixing unit to which double cone containers (of 10, 25, 50, 75, and 100 litres) can be associated, with the same geometry, to be blended at different speeds.
Powders with “Free Flow” features can be blended for a certain number of revolutions (time, RPM) regardless of the chosen speed, while the blending of the “Cohesive” type must be blended at high speeds in order to improve the shear cut and blend of the components.
DVC versatility is given by the possibility of combining different container sizes, loading level of a certain container and the blending speed.
SCALE UP
With the same geometry of container and a variable blending speed, DVC blender meets the basic requirements to scale between sizes.
In the case of Free Flow powder blend, the scaling up is possible only by maintaining:
• The filling relation (powder volume to total container volume)
• The number of total revolutions.
• The Froude number (dynamic scale factor)
An example of scaling up:
In the DVC blender of 10 litres, the following blending is mixed:
• 3 kg. of bulk density powder 0.5 grams / cc.
• For 15 minutes.
• At 20 RPM.
Getting a blending with CU of a dye given by the variation coefficient, CV=4.5%. The same blending quality is obtained in the DVC of 75 litres in the following conditions:
• 22.5 kg. of the same powder.
• For 21 minutes.
• At 14 RPM.
