Addressing Handling Challenges of Chemicals By Dry Granulation

By Thomas Briel, Raphael Guebeli, Rupa Bhattarai, Anke Simon, Corinna Merkel, Moritz Beck-Broichsitter

Buffers, salts and stabilizing chemicals are used in multi-ton quantities during biopharmaceutical manufacturing. The handling of such quantities in a pharmaceutical production environment can be challenging: Caking and clumping of chemicals, dust formation and laborious weighing have a negative impact on manufacturing efficiency and may even lead to process interruptions, quality deviations and operator safety risks. As dry granulation uses compression force only without water or other additives, it is ideal for highly sensitive materials and offers the benefit of ensuring that characteristics of the raw materials are preserved. This poster assesses dry granulation as a potential means to overcome caking issues and improve handling.