FABRICATION AND EVALUATION OF LABORATORY SCALE MINIGRANULATOR USING THE CONCEPT OF DESIGN OF EXPERIMENTS

The main objective of the present work was to design, fabricate and evaluate a laboratory scale mini granulator for applications in the research and development department. The Box and Behnken design was adopted to identify the critical parameters in the wet granulation process. The granules and tablets were characterized. The spherical granules obtained by using the fabricated mini granulator were of size 600 to 750 μ. On the other hand, the manual method (mortar and pestle) resulted in the formation of larger granules (800-950 μ). Recovery of granules by both the manual method and laboratory scale mini granulator were 71 and 90%, respectively. From the Box and Behnken design, an optimized formula was achieved with granulation time of 10 min, binder concentration 2.35 % and impeller speed 3000 rpm. Use of the mini granulator is recommended for screening of various formulations at R&D centers and also at colleges where the availability of drug is a few grams.