Continuous dry granulation has been an established process in the pharmaceutical industry for decades. It is not only applied for moisture- and temperature-sensitive materials, but also for large volume or herbal products, respectively. An advantage of the dry granulation process is that, in contrast to classic wet granulation, no energy-intensive drying processes are needed. Therefore, customers will be able to invest less in machines and production rooms, resulting in lower costs per batch. In addition, the operating costs are reduced as there is no additional power consumption for drying and it requires only low maintenance costs.
Innovative electromechanical roller drive
L.B. Bohle developed the dry granulator BRC with an electromechanical roller drive and massive roller shafts. The aim is to produce a granule with defined density or porosity for immediate pelletizing after compacting. The powder is compacted between two rollers with specified gap widths between 1 and 6 mm. Minimal time is needed to achieve a steady state during process startup, and parallel gap is assured during the whole production time. The integrated PID loop control minimizes the gap deviations during processing and enables constant granule porosities.
Conical Turbo Sieve BTS
The granulation step is achieved using a conical sieve (Bohle Turbo Sieve 200, L.B. Bohle), which gently transforms the ribbons into final granules even at high material throughputs. Due to different sieve setups, the desired particle size distribution can be obtained.
Through target research and development, the BRC dry granulator technology has been tailored to meet customers’ requirements. Thus, the BRC especially fulfils all specifications regarding ease-of-use, targeted control, cleaning and hygienic design. Furthermore, the BRC requires extremely low maintenance and maintenance time as hydraulic technology was abandoned entirely.
Short Cleaning Cycles and Easy Scale-up
Cleaning for a product change can be implemented within two hours. This is not only due to the WIP equipment included as standard, but also to the easily dismountable components.
During the development of the BRC series, Bohle engineers paid attention to make the scale-up from BRC 25 to BRC 100 as easy as possible. This is ensured through the identical roller geometry and control in both machines.
The benefits of the Dry Granulator BRC:
- Minimal material loss due to precise control of the compression force with an innovative electromechanical roller drive
- Constant ribbon properties assured with sensitive gap width control
- Easy handling and short mounting procedures
- Hygienic design and effective cleaning by integrated WIP nozzles
- Versatile and gentle particle size adjustment with integrated Bohle Turbo Sieve (BTS 200)
- PAT tool integration possible
