Estudo do processo de recobrimento contínuo de extratos fitoterápicos secos em leito de jorro.

Abstract

The present work aimed to study the continuous coating process of stone breaker (Phylanthus niruri L.) granules in spouted bed. The granules were obtained from the granulation process, through humid via of stone breaker’s dry extract, in which the PVP-K30 was utilized as a binder. It was used a cone-cylindrical spouted bed coater, built of Plexiglass, whose dimensions were: angular base of 60o, column diameter of 5cm, column height of 45cm and inlet orifice diameter of 3.0 cm. The aqueous polymeric suspension of Eudragit was sprayed on the particles bed through the double-fluid atomizer nozzle located at the top the bed. The experiment carried out granules of 0.4kg formed by particles whose granulometric distribution varied from 1.7 to 3.35 mm. Initially, the characteristic curves had been analyzed and then, after these results were taken into consideration along with the coating preliminary tests, a 23 factorial design - with 3 central points and 6 axial points, 17-run full factorial design - was employed to evaluate the effects of the operational variables on the coating process. The independent variables studied were the air pressure of atomization, flow rate of suspension and the air inlet temperature. The responses analyzed were the process efficiency, the particles growth, the agglomeration index and the evaporation rate. The process efficiency varied from 40.78 to 93.19%, the relative growth from 7.31 to 15.86%, the agglomeration index from 0 to 38.82% and the evaporation rate from 3.16 to 10.9 g/min. The factorial design provided statistically significant models to the agglomeration index and the particles growth. As for the evaporation rate, besides being statistically significant, the model obtained was also predictive. Dissolution tests were carried out to analyze the coating film in the runs with lower and higher efficiency and with central point. The active ingredient evaluated in these tests was the total flavonoids content. The results point out the importance of the in vitro dissolution study and also that the coating process in spouted bed is a viable alternative to the profile modification in the granular pharmaceutic form’s release.