What Will Hopper Blender Do for Future Pharmaceutical Industry

Writer： admin Time：2020-03-24 14:01 Browse：℃

It can be observed that although international pharmaceutical industry is pretty advanced, our domestic production doesn’t keep up with it and still has many shortages. The particular is device cleaning, which seems to be small but run through the whole production flow. It is closely related to medicine quality. However, devices are more cleaned manually in China. Therefore, for accountability and traceability regulated by cGMP, only the former can be realized.

Years before, since domestic GMP was in primary transformation, it was acceptable to ignore problems of device cleaning and material conveying. However, GMP implementation now and in the future should raise our awareness of the two problems. People will pay more and more attention to the transformation on device cleaning and material conveying. After some survey, we find that a machine can solve these two problems effectively, namely, hopper blender. In general, this machine more conforms to cGMP and can improve production capacity and ensure cleaning washing. Besides, it can push modernization of pharmaceutical industry and control and improve medicine quality.

1.Basic principle
Blender is a process to make constituents more uniform. It is mainly convection blending. A particle moves from a spacial position to another, or more than two constituents moves in the same space for uniform distribution of them. Blending machine applies different structure of blending devices to push powder materials to move relatively and change their relative positions. This process can solve the problem of materials stratification caused by materials diversity.

Blending equipment also includes multiple models. Hopper (square cone) blending device is one of them. It has the features of multi-directional blending machine. The hopper blender applies overturn of hopper and the angle between left and right holding arm to overturn and mix materials. Meanwhile, the angle between hopper and rotary axis can generate overturn and tangential movement of materials. For a series of reasons, materials can be mixed and distributed uniformly. The mixing uniformity can be over 99% with material loading coefficient of 50-80%. such a machine can blend materials and be lifted for convenient formulation and washing. It can also be a machine for dust-free production and mixing of solid preparations.

Hopper blender consists of machine frame, rotary device, driving system, lifting system, braking system and control system. Hopper can be pushed into the rotary device. Machine then lifts and clamps the rotary device. When the pressure sensor gets clamping signals, the driving system operates and machine starts to mix according to set time and speed. After mixing as set, the rotary device will turn vertical and stop and braking system operates to stop mixing. Afterwards, lifting system operates to lower the hopper. After hopper is pushed out, the mixing process finishes and then all of the data of this batch will be printed automatically.
2.Features
Hopper blender can clamp, lift, mix and lower. Its features are as follows:

1)A hopper blender can be equipped with hoppers of different specifications and volumes, which can meet requirement of multiple batches and variable types.
2)Hopper blender is controlled by PLC. It can mix according to set time and speed and print data automatically. Besides, the control system controls together with hydraulic and gas devices to intelligently display, adjust, monitor and alarm.
3)Sensitive sensor of this machine can make sure that hopper can be installed, lifted, clamped, braked and aligned precisely. Besides, the lifting lock of lifting system and double pressure interlock of protecting structure can secure blender clamping and mixing. Equipped cover ensuring device can prevent material being poured out due to mistaken operation. In addition, sensor control system is equipped with safety separating device, working indicator, safety indicator, self-check stopping, audible alarming and many emergency stop buttons to secure production.
4)The surfaces of hopper blender parts contacting with materials are polished with Ra of inner and outer surface no more than 0.2μm and 0.4μm respectively. It is a leading technique in domestic pharmaceutical machine surface treatment.