#Industry News
State-of-the-Art Equipment for Trials in the Service Center
New Technology: TriPan Coater BFC 50 Is the Latest Generation and GMA in Combination with the BFS 30 Fluid Bed
L.B. Bohle Maschinen + Verfahren GmbH has installed the new machines at the Service Center in order to offer its customers the latest machine generation for test trials. The Service Center was first opened in 2005 at Bohle’s headquarters in Ennigerloh. On more than 500 m², the center offers numerous possibilities to test new products and develop and optimize processes. A complete pharmaceutical production line is available at the Service Center to develop and test machines and processes. This makes it possible to work under actual conditions at pilot plant scale. Various measuring, test and analysis equipment supplements the production line.
BFC TriPan can be operated with three pans
As part of the test runs in the Service Center, numerous customers have already expressed great satisfaction with the quality and productivity of our machines,” states CEO Lorenz Bohle on the successful Service Center concept. “Reliable tests with a focus on our customers’ needs is the best recipe for success,” Lorenz Bohle continues. With the new installation of the BFC TriPan at the Service Center,
L.B. Bohle provides customers with state-of-the-art coating technology for trials. The BFC TriPan can be operated with three pans for batch sizes of 7 to 75 litres. The
coater drums can be changed in less than30 minutes.
“The innovations of the BFC TriPan primarily concern the design. The nozzle arm was expanded to six nozzles in total,” explains Andreas Altmeyer, Head of the Service Center. The nozzles themselves are fed independently (three peristaltic pump double heads for six nozzles) so that spray products that are difficult to process (e.g. methylacrylate) can be sprayed securely with every nozzle. Moreover, the angle
of the spray nozzle and the distance between the spray nozzles and the tablet bed can be set automatically as a recipe parameter. When a trial is started, these important recipe parameters can therefore be optimized without manual intervention.
The infrared product temperature sensor was also incorporated as a fixed component. It continuously measures the core bed temperature in addition to the
supply and exhaust air temperature.
Close cooperation with universities
The BFS 30 Bohle Uni Cone BUC®, which has already been installed at the Service Center,was extended by the GMA 70 High-shear Granulator to form a system with a compact footprint. Therefore, all classic wet granulation processes are now available for test runs with state-of-the-art technology at the Service Center. L.B. Bohle sees great potential in the fluid bed technology in particular. The Bohle Uni Cone BUC® process, which was presented at Interpack in 2014, offers numerous advantages compared to the conventional Wurster process. According to the Head of the Service Center, Andreas Altmeyer, “fluid bed systems are state of the art and offer various benefits: Compared to the classic top spray process, granulation/drying and pellet coating are performed in one system without requiring any changes or additional inserts. Several patents have been achieved with the system.” Thanks to constant cooperation with universities or as part of customer trials, process analytical technologies (PAT) such as the Parsum probe for online particle size measurement or NIR/MW humidity sensors are used at the Service Center as well. This ensures an optimum process flow for agglomeration by agitation or pellet coating (prevention of pellet agglomeration).
