(249c) A Semi-Theoretical Model for Simulating the Temporal Evolution of Moisture-Temperature during Industrial Fluidized Bed Granulation
AIChE Annual Meeting
2020
2020 Virtual AIChE Annual Meeting
Pharmaceutical Discovery, Development and Manufacturing Forum
Integrated Design for Drug Product Processes
Tuesday, November 17, 2020 - 8:15am to 8:30am
Moisture plays a major role in determining the attributes of granules prepared by fluidized bed granulation (FBG). In this talk, we are presenting a semi-theoretical droplet-based evaporation rate model that was developed and incorporated into moisture mass-enthalpy balances to simulate the temporal evolution of bed moisture-temperature. Experimental data from a GPCG30 unit were used to fit the model parameters. With only two fitting parameters, the model demonstrated very good capability to describe the moisture-temperature evolution for a wide range of operating conditions. Then, in a global process model (GPM) approach, the evaporation parameters were fitted to multi-linear functions of inlet air temperature, binder concentration, and spray rate. The GPM was validated successfully by simulating a different data set which was not used in its calibration. As the GPM demonstrated a good predictive capability, it was further used to investigate the impacts of process parameters. Numerical simulations suggest that the proposed GPM predicts the experimentally well-established trends of moisture-temperature profiles in previously published data, proving the applicability of the GPM approach. This study has demonstrated the capabilities of simple process models as a practical approach to predict time-wise evolution of bed moisture-temperature profiles in industrial FBG modeling, while also pointing out their limitations.