Computational modelling of powder blending and flow in continuous pharmaceutical manufacturing

Continuous manufacturing is an emerging technology for producing pharmaceutical products. A thorough understanding of material behaviour during the manufacturing process is important in product development and manufacturing. FREEDOM (Enabling scale-flexible process development for continuous solid-dosage manufacturing towards Pharma 4.0) is a consortium funded by VLAIO - Flanders Innovation and Entrepreneurship, Belgium.

Computational modelling will be performed using the discrete element method, and validated using the experimental data to be obtained by other FREEDOM partners. Specific tasks for this project include but not limited to:

• Critical literature review to understand the background, the state-of-the-art and the challenges,  and to identify the knowledge gap.
• Development, calibration and validation of DEM models for continuous powder blending and powder flow in feed frames.

Aims

The project aims to develop a design space for continuous blending based upon thorough micromechanical analysis of the process. Using the design space, optimal process condition can be identified for a given formulation and a required throughput. To achieve this goal, the following specific objectives are identified for this work package:

1. To develop a discrete element model for continuous blending
2. To develop computer models for predicting flow behaviour as a function of formulation properties in the feed frame and during die filling
3. To validate and refine the computer model experimentally to assess the model fidelity
4. To perform a comprehensive numerical analysis of continuous blending, from which a process regime map can be constructed.