Development of Directly Compressible Co-excipient by Spray Drying Technique

Co-excipients has multifunctional properties like good flow property, compressibility index and less moisture content and therefore it can be used in direct compression method to reduce many steps like granulation, blending and milling in wet. The aim of the present study was to develop co-processed directly compressible excipients using optimized spray drying technique. Experimental design was built to investigate the effect of three factors - Inlet temperature of spray dryer, Atomization pressure and Feed rate at two level using spray dried yield, moisture content and compressibility index of spray dried coprocessed excipient as dependent variables. Box-behnken design was applied for optimization of spray dryer parameters. The Design Expert software has given the optimized parameters as Inlet temperature 120 0C, Atomization pressure 2 bar and Feed rate 5.01 rpm and using these optimized parameters one validation batch was taken and evaluated for its Scanning electronic microscopy (SEM) and Differential scanning calorimetry (DSC) study. Spray drying method was found to be suitable for the preparation of directly compressible coprocessed excipient. This new technique will save the time and possible cost for the development of tablet dosage forms.