Mathematical modeling of the coating process

Abstract

Coating of tablets is a common unit operation in the pharmaceutical industry. In most cases, the final product must meet strict quality requirements; to meet them, a detailed understanding of the coating process is required. To this end, numerous experiment studies have been performed. However, to acquire a mechanistic understanding, experimental data must be interpreted in the light of mathematical models. In recent years, a combination of analytical modeling and computational simulations enabled deeper insights into the nature of the coating process. This paper presents an overview of modeling and simulation approaches of the coating process, covering various relevant aspects from scale-up considerations to coating mass uniformity investigations and models for drop atomization. The most important analytical and computational concepts are presented and the findings are compared.

Keywords: Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD); Discrete Element Method (DEM); Film coating; Modeling; Pharmaceutical Engineering; Tablet coating.