Pharmaceutical Mixing Equipment: Mixing has always been a very integral part of manufacturing pharmaceutical equipment. In order to form a right pharmaceutical product with proper compositing and content mixing plays a very important and integrated part. Today we will be looking at some of the well known and primary pharmaceutical mixing equipment that are widely used in the production units for manufacturing of pharmaceutical products. We try to look at few of them in a very short and precise way.
Pharmaceutical Mixing Equipment – Pharmaceutical Blending & Mixing pdf
Depending on type of mixing we can categorize the procedures accordingly which are as follows:
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Liquid-liquid mixing
There are different types of mixtures used for mixing liquid with liquid in the pharmaceutical production units. This process is quite complex and requires additional monitoring. There are different types of mixers used for this purpose namely, Shaker mixers, Propeller mixers, Paddle mixers, Turbine mixers, sonic and ultrasound devices such as Rapisonic homogenizer. These equipment are uses for manufacturing antacid suspensions, different emulsions, anti-diarrhoeal mixtures and other such pharmaceutical products.
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Solid-solid mixing
For solid to solid mixing of pharmaceutical products there are different types of equipments in use on a general basis. This includes Agitator mixers, Tumbling mixers, Double cone mixers, and V-blenders and others. These equipments are generally used for mixing of dry (solid base) powders. These are mainly used for making tablets of various types and sizes.
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Semi-solid mixing
Then there is semi to solid mixing equipment perfectly designed for this specific purpose also. For this purpose there are different types of Agitator mixers that are in use like sigma mixers and planetary mixers. Other than this there is Shear mixer like triple roller mills and colloidal mills as well. These are basically used for wet granulation procedure while manufacturing tablets and also in the production of ointments as well. Sigma mixture can also be used in case of solid to solid mixing as well.
Other than the above mixing equipment there are different types of mixtures that are also in use while making up of Pharmaceutical products. These include tumbling mixer. These are close vessel mixer rotating about its axis. They are basically found in double cone, V-mixer and rotating cube as well. Here the quality of mixing is limited and works on diffusive mixing mechanism.
Then comes Convective mixers which is accompanied with some diffusive and shear mixing. This machine works typically less than 60 rpm. Here ribbon blenders are used on a horizontal axis in a static cylinder set on a circular pattern within in a static shell. Paddles or rotating blades are used in this machine.
Other important pharmaceutical mixing equipments include Conical screw mixer, Muller mixer, Pug mill, Pan mixer, Change can mixer, Banbury mixer and the list is endless.
On a whole it can be easily said that these different types of mixing equipment are used in order to serve different purposes and to obtain a specific result in the pharmaceutical product manufacturing. Most of these mixers work on a very complex process and generally have an automatic procedure to work on. This really is a complex process and needs lot of understand and one must go through years of experience in order to progress and handle these types of machine with care and in a right way. Without prior knowledge about these type of machine, handling can really be difficult and would produce inverse reaction to the pharmaceutical process. Most of these equipment are built in a specific way according to their way of action and mostly are brittle in nature and use of pharmaceutical mixing equipments can really be challenging.