ConsiGma FC Lab - Mark Rowland

My name is Mark. I'm here to introduce new tablet coater, the CFC lab. It's a machine that's designed specifically to work at the R&D level in the batch range, between half a kilogram and 1.5kg. It integrates with our AirConnect Fluid processor system. It's an air handler and fluid bed processor that we can use for creating the air for the coating process. And it's also designed to go right the way through into our production platform as well. The ConsiGma coater has been in production for the last 15 years for GEA, but this is the first time we've brought in a lab machine. So what it gives you is that capability to run at the 0.5 to 1.5 kilograms scale, and then to build out the process into our nine kilogram production equipment. The real benefit is the fast process. Time that we run with a typical process will take one minute for loading and discharge, and just five minutes for the actual coating. So even with this machine behind me, a 1.5kg batch size will give me a 15kg per hour production rate. I then take that on into our production equipment, which can run with a nine kilogram batch size. Nine kilogram batches run ten times an hour, will then give us a 90kg per hour production rate over a 24 hour period. That's nearly one point. That's over 1.8 tonnes of material, and that's a really good productivity. Now let's go and focus a little bit more on the equipment itself and see how it works. One of the key differences between the CFC lab and a conventional drum coater is the speed of the wheel. Now you can see here the wheel is rotating at about 85 revolutions per minute. And what that does is it sticks the tablets to the outside of the wheel, and they run around in a circle. Over on the side here we have two items called air knives and those air knives then blow the tablets off of the wheel. So they're in freefall as they come around this side of the drum. We then spray the tablets as they start the freefall, and by the time they reattach to the drum, they are dry again. So we going through this continuous process. Now with the wheel running at this speed, that means each tablet is coated 85 times every minute with a very tiny micro coat and that slow build up of the coat. So that micro buildup of the coat means we get a very consistent quality to the tablets. When you look at a conventional coater, when it's only at just five revolutions per minute, the tablets are rolling over each other for a long period of time. And what that does is it causes erosion on the edges of the tablets, and that erosion means you need to apply more coating solution in order to get a quality, homogeneous layer of color over the tablets. You can see that in the tablets that we have here. Here's some that we've prepared before, and I will show you them in my hand. And look at the unusual shape. Very difficult to get a shape like this coated in a conventional drum coater. The little edges, the little crevices are very difficult to coat, but also over a long period of time where the tablets run over each other, the edges of the tablets will lose material. It's called erosion. That does not happen with this machine because the coating is applied and dried within that very short space of time. Other products that we can do on the coater are like these micro tabs. You can see here. These tiny two millimeter micro tablets can be just as easily coated on this machine. So niche products, but it's another product that is very well applied with this system. So the CFC lab is an R&D machine and we want to take samples of our product. What we have here is a sample stick. And very simply because the product is cascading down it's very simple for us to come in here take a sample. Pull the sample out. And deposit into the sample jar. And that sample jar, we can then take off and see what the samples look like. The system is connected on to our AirConnect platform. So if you want to try out the coater, you can come to our labs. Bring your most difficult tablets, your most hard to coat, your most friable, your most difficult tablets. Bring them to our labs and we will coat them for you. One of the key features of the CFC lab, as I've said already, is it's really fast batch time. We can do a coating in just five minutes. Now the real benefit then is when you do come to our lab, we're able to run a complete design of experiment for you. With just 40kg of material in less than half a day. That gives you all the parameters that you will ever need to know in order to get the perfect tablet.