Tablets & capsules are one of the most successful forms of administering pharmaceutical medicines, so it is no surprise that they have been adopted into the nutraceutical arena. The tablet or capsule is versatile, small, robust and accurate, and can be consistently mass-produced at high speeds.
However, in order to manufacture a quality tablet or capsule, the powders used in this process have to meet the ideal consistency and condition, otherwise they will pose problems all the way along the manufacturing chain.
The Challenge for Nutraceuticals and Foods
The ingredients used in nutraceutical products, do not make it easy to create the ideal powders.
The number of ingredients, all with their own characteristics, can add complexity. Some of the most common multivitamin formulas can contain up to 50 active ingredients and 2–8 excipients which is in stark contrast to Pharmaceutical formulations where maybe only a couple of actives and a few excipients are used.
These higher numbers of active ingredients in nutraceutical formulations bring challenges related to differing particle sizes, causing issues with powder flow if some of them are more sticky, compressibility, moisture sensitivity, ingredient interaction, content uniformity and quality control (QC) testing.
For an efficient manufacturing process, the powders should be flowable, free from agglomerates, and meets the correct particle size distribution ready for the end process of tabletting or encapsulating. If the target particle sizes are not reached, blends can suffer from separation as they flow down the production line. At the tablet production stage, further problems can occur, in the form of capping and difficulties with compression.
Manufacturers of Nutraceuticals, Functional Foods, and Nutritional Supplements often find that process material discharged from batch and continuous drying operations, are in most cases unsuitable for the subsequent following stage of processing.
Continuous drying in spray driers often produces powdered materials with a density that is too low to fit into their desired volume package. In addition, irregular and oversized particles are often formed during the starting and stopping operations. Similarly, dried material from batch fluid bed driers, lyophilizers (freeze driers), tray driers, rotary driers, filter driers, and tumble dryers typically cannot be used ‘as-dried’ due to aggregates and agglomerations that have formed during the drying process.
Milling Food and Nutraceuticals
The Quadro® Overdriven Comil® and FlexSift® are widely used for post-drying conditioning of nutraceutical material. Each milling technology serves a specific need but both ensure equally sized particles – ready for the next processing step.
They can both be used as discrete unit operations or integrated in line with upstream and downstream equipment. In order to meet high standards of hygiene, Sanitary flanges are standard on the inlet and discharge points resulting in contained processing (capable of OEL < 1 µg/m3).
The Comil® and FlexSift® are often delivered with a portable base which means they can be placed under multiple drying stations whenever needed and they are designed to operate under vacuum conditions (pneumatic conveying adaptors can be added at any time).
The Results
The Quadro Comil® and FlexSift® are easy to deploy and maintain and can be flood-fed or equipped with dosing or isolation valves.
The small footprint and high capacity throughput ensure the product is correctly sized at a fraction of the time it takes for other traditional technologies.
Learn more about our milling equipment for particle size reduction, or visit our knowledge base for resources such as case studies, webinars and brochures.
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