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When choosing your desired system, the factors to consider are: • Required speed / number of doses per hour • Batch size & dose size • Desired accuracy levels • Container design • Available budget
Although, ultimately, the suitability of your fi lling solution will be determined by the product sample itself. Therefore, a product test is highly recommended to maximise your output and streamline operation; Biopharma offers a free product sample test to assess the best fi lling solution and accessories.
Factors Affecting Powder Filling Applications
Powder fi lling or dispensing is a term used in many industries and not limited to a specifi c application. While decisions should be made on the most suitable fi ll solution, the product itself needs to be examined to determine its characteristics:
• Compressibility • Free fl owing or non-free fl owing • Stickiness/dusting
• Size and shape of the particles • Desired dose size • Product cost
Product characteristics Container type
The container design is often determined at the early stage of the new powdered product development process, meaning the fi lling could potentially be an afterthought. However, container parameters will play a crucial role on the selection of the fi lling equipment, and so should certainly not be overlooked.
With the aforementioned in mind, versatility of equipment is clearly an essential quality when considering powder fi lling apparatus. KCC volumetric systems have around 20 various standard fi lling guns to choose from, each differing from the other, ensuring a customer specifi c dosage application can be achieved within tolerance. Filling gun barrels have a different chamber diameter and overall volumetric capacity to assure precise dosage.
Being KCC’s European distributor, Biopharma Group encourages clients to carry out free sample trials at our UK facility to allow the opportunity to experiment with actual samples; this allows the best advice to be offered in relation to the following:
• Appropriate fi lling gun size – allowing for accurate dosing (within the customers specifi ed tolerance range) for your product sample size.
• Dosing pressure – to ensure dispensing is an effi cient procedure, minimising the risk of some product retention in the fi lling gun (if too low a pressure being used). In addition, to reduce the prospect of material being expelled from the fi lling barrel at too great a force, facilitating ‘dusting’, and ultimately loss of product/inaccurate dosing; an occurrence we always seek to avoid.
No matter what particle size your sample is, the uniform/similar shape and dimensions of the particle will be distributed in more harmonised manner, while also improving the constant bulk density and accuracy levels between the dosage.
Looking at the right-hand side picture above, the particle size elements differ significantly, which will likely compromise the repeatability between the doses. This is because the amount of small and very large particle sized drawn by vacuum in each fill will affect the overall bulk density and weight of the fill. By assuring that the particular sample has consistent size particles, we can achieve very high accuracy and repeatability of dosage.
Where the auger systems have the tendency to damage the product, this results in uneven distribution and low dosage weight repeatability; moreover, auger fillers require slow operation to have the capability to improve the accuracy levels, extending the pick-up rate significantly. In comparison, the volumetric system by KCC allows the product to be picked up by negative vacuum and condense it in the filling chamber without a loss of integrity of given product.
Undoubtedly, the pick-up rate will depend on the powder behaviour under the vacuum. Lighter powders may pick up faster, but they may have higher dusting properties and could also compact under the vacuum with higher overall bulk density.
Dusting v Accuracy
Product dusting during the dispense contributes to unnecessary wastage, increased cleaning and H&S protocols, whilst also infl uencing the discrepancy between the weight of the fi lls. This circumstance has been take into consideration during the design stage of the Kinematics powder fi ller systems and fl exible solutions are in place to assist various product characteristics. Larger and heavier samples may need signifi cantly higher force to dispense the product, whereas a small light one will require light positive pressure to aid this process. The KCC systems therefore have an adjustable positive pressure vacuum gauge to aid specifi c dosage requirements, improving overall instrument fl exibility.
Custom made solutions are also available if an ‘off-the-shelf’ item may not provide the best suited result.
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• Container height – needs to be enough to accommodate the length of draw in the volumetric fi lling gun chamber.
Some sachets or bags may cause user handling diffi culties, which would also require further investigation prior moving to production stage. For instance; the pouch will require opening prior the fi lling stage, and closing following the dose.
Implementing a solution
With the vast manufacturer experience and Biopharma’s free product evaluation offer, we can confi dently provide tailored advice and support for any powder fi lling application; including a weekly hire option on a 4400VC system.
For further assistance contact
bps@biopharma.co.uk
WWW.LABMATE-ONLINE.COM
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