What is it about?
Continuous pharmaceutical manufacturing has always lagged behind other industries due to difficulty in measuring quality variables in real time, which in turn can help to control the quality of product (a necessary requirement). In this study, a microwave sensor is designed that provides real-time online information of certain critical quality variables such as compacted powder density, moisture content and drug concentration. The results were compared to other techniques such as NIR and existing off-line studies and found to provide more reliable measurement.
Featured Image
Why is it important?
The research helps in bringing continuous manufacturing to pharmaceutical industry. Having an understanding of quality variable is important and first step towards it, is to be able to measure it in real-time. Current real-time techniques (such as NIR) have drawbacks that can be addressed via using a microwave sensor and the presented method is far superior in terms of capturing information than the current off-line (industry prevalent) methods.
Perspectives
The article discusses a methodology that can help bring continuous manufacturing to the forefront of pharmaceutical manufacturing. If you are interested in automating/controlling a manufacturing process involving particulates then the research provides a compelling solution.
Anshu Gupta
Air Products and Chemicals Inc
Read the Original
This page is a summary of: A Novel Microwave Sensor for Real-Time Online Monitoring of Roll Compacts of Pharmaceutical Powders Online—A Comparative Case Study with NIR, Journal of Pharmaceutical Sciences, May 2015, Elsevier,
DOI: 10.1002/jps.24409.
You can read the full text:
Contributors
The following have contributed to this page
