Search

Stimulated by Pharma 4.0, the pharmaceutical industry is changing from batch-wise to continuous manufacturing. Therefore, individual processing steps such as blending of the active pharmaceutical ingredient (API) with excipients have to be re-designed to continuous operations. In this study, batch and continuous powder blending are directly compared for API with three different excipients with varying material properties. Content uniformity analysis of the blends shows that the continuous process results in more homogeneous blends for all excipients, independent of API dosage. The type of excipient used, however does impact the consistency of the continuous blending process over time. The results presented here reveal the impact of the physical material properties of excipients on blending with API in batch and continuous processes.

We tailored the size distribution of Pt nanoparticles (NPs) on graphene nanoplatelets at a given metal loading by using low-temperature atomic layer deposition carried out in a fluidized bed reactor operated at atmospheric pressure. The Pt NPs deposited at low temperature (100 °C) after 10 cycles were more active and stable towards the propene oxidation reaction than their high-temperature counterparts. Crucially, the gap in the catalytic performance was retained even after prolonged periods of time (>24 hours) at reaction temperatures as high as 450 °C. After exposure to such harsh conditions the Pt NPs deposited at 100 °C still retained a size distribution that is narrower than the one of the as-synthesized NPs obtained at 250 °C. The difference in performance correlated with the difference in the number of facet sites as estimated after the catalytic test. Our approach provides not only a viable route for the scalable synthesis of stable supported Pt NPs with tailored size distributions but also a tool for studying the structure-function relationship.