(200al) Anti-Static Agent Addition in Excipients – Always a Decent Way to Increase Powder Process-Ability in Pharmaceutical Industries?

Granular materials, fine powders and nanostructured powders are widely used in several industrial applications. In particular, excipients are necessary in many dry powder pharmaceutical formulations (dry powder inhaler, tablets, capsules). Thus, any additional information regarding their behaviour and any recommendation about the use of additives could have huge consequences for the optimization of industrial processes or to avoid technical issues (caking, clogging, noncompliance or unconformity of the by-product).

Moreover, to increase powders process-ability, it is commonly admitted to blend excipients and antistatic material, in order to decrease powders triboelectric effect. In this poster, we will show how different talc mass fractions additions affect excipients behaviour. For this purpose, two different lactose grades were selected: Inhalac 400 and Flowlac 90. Five talc mass fractions are studied: 0, 5, 10, 15 and 20%. The blends compaction dynamic (GranuPack instrument), electrical charges (GranuCharge instrument), granulation and dynamic flowability (GranuDrum instrument) are investigated. The additions are found to decrease the electrical charges in contact with Stainless-Steel material (for a specific amount of talc), to limit lactose agglomeration tendency, but also to decrease powder dynamic flowability. Moreover, for the Flowlac 90 it was found that the compaction dynamic is faster with a high fraction of talc.

It will be also shown, that the anti-static agent addition is not every time a decent solution.