Scale-up of a Pan-Coating Process

Scale-up of a Pan-Coating Process
The purpose of this work was to develop a practical scale-up model for a solvent-based pan-coating process. Practical scale-up rules to determine the key parameters (pan load, pan speed, spray rate, air flow) required to control the process are proposed. The proposed scale-up rules are based on a macroscopic evaluation of the coating process. Implementation of these rules does not require complex experimentation or prediction of model parameters. The proposed scale-up rules were tested by conducting coating scale-up and scale-down experiments on 24-inch and 52-inch Vector Hi-coaters. The data demonstrate that using these rules led to similar cumulative drug release profiles (f2 >> 50; and P Analysis of Variance [PANOVA] >> 0.05 for cumulative percentage of drug released after 12 hours [Cum12]) from tablets made at 24- and 52-inch scales. Membrane characteristics such as opacity and roughness were also similar across the 2 scales.