High Pressure Homogenizer in Pharmaceuticals: Understanding Its Critical Processing Parameters and Applications

Abstract

The high pressure homogenizer (HPH) in pharmaceutical industry is specifically used for size reduction, mixing, and stabilization of dispersions or droplets. In HPH, liquid is passed through a narrow gap under high pressure where the different processing parameters lead to changes in globule/particle size. Understanding these processing parameters with a view to its pharmaceutical applications will be useful in producing a consistent and predefined quality of pharmaceuticals. A systematic literature review using the available knowledge space was conducted by publications available on the subject matter until 2018. The keywords used in different combinations like “high pressure homogenization,” “pharmaceuticals,” and “process parameters of HPH” were searched in databases of web of science, PubMed, and Scopus. The collected data was systematically analyzed. The review findings revealed the importance of understanding the basics engineering involved in construction of the HPH instrument, which included the types of pressure pumps and piston pumps, geometry and design of valves, O rings, and impact rings in HPH. Getting into the vertical knowledge obtained, the mechanism of droplet fragmentation and other critical processing parameters were shown to be affecting the product output from HPH. The review gives an insight to the understanding of processing parameters and colloidal principles involved in achieving the different pharmaceutical applications by the formulations formulated using the HPH.