This course curriculum includes introduction to two unit operations namely Size reduction & Size separation mainly used in Pharmaceutical Industry in the manufacturing of tablets, suspensions, ORS, powder preparations, etc.

The particle size of solid drugs and excipients has a significant effect on many of their properties, including rate of dissolution and powder flow characteristics.

During raw material manufacture, the solid produced is often of a larger size than that is required ideally and thus size reduction is a key process prior to incorporation into a finished product.

Size reduction is reduction of solid material from average particle size to smaller particle size. The purpose is to reduce the size & increase the surface area. Also it is used to free useful material that may be embedded. During milling, not all the particles formed are of same size and this is not acceptable in pharmaceutical field.

Therefore, the next step is to perform size separation. Size separation involves separation of mixture of various size particles into two or more portions using screening surfaces.

Different commercial size separation methodologies and equipment exist, whose designs are dependent on the final required particle size and the size of the commercial batch. Size separation methodologies include: sedimentation, sieving elutriation and cyclone methods.

Generally size reduction & size separation are carried out together to obtain powder with desired particle size for acceptable flow and compressibility for downstream processing.

This course also includes various equipment which is employed for the above two unit operations.