Abstract
AbstractMicrocrystalline cellulose pellets for oral drug delivery are often produced by a combined wet extrusion‐spheronization process. During the entire process, the cylindrical as well as the spherical pellets are exposed to various stresses resulting in a change of their shape and size due to plastic deformation and breakage. In this work, the effect of moisture content of pellets on their mechanical behavior is studied. In static compression tests, the strong influence of water content on deformation behavior of pellets is confirmed. Moreover, impact tests are performed using a setup consisting of three high‐speed cameras to record pellet‐wall collisions. Material properties, such as stiffness, restitution coefficient, breakage force, and displacement, were analyzed depending on the water content.
Highlights
In agglomeration technology, cylindrical pellets are commonly produced by extrusion or press agglomeration [1]
To advance the understanding of the strength of wet pellets, this paper focuses on the deformation behavior of pellets with varying water content with respect to the extrusion and spheronization processes
The water content decreases and solid bridges are formed between primary particles
Summary
Cylindrical pellets are commonly produced by extrusion or press agglomeration [1]. Adams et al [13] measured the collision behavior of wet granules They found that at least 97 % of the kinetic impact energy is dissipated by viscous effects due to the liquid bridge, which is generated in the contact region for small impact velocities and by bulk viscoplastic effects at higher speeds. Iveson et al [16] performed compression tests of pellets with different Ca numbers and found that for Ca > 10–4 the viscous forces will be dominant and significantly influence the yield strength of the wet particles For this case, the adhesion criteria based on the Stokes number and the ‘‘wet’’ restitution coefficient are used. The restitution coefficient of the pellets is measured with a self-developed setup consisting of three high-speed cameras
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