[Wetting agent dosage screening for traditional Chinese medicine pellet based on torque rheological property]

Abstract

With lubricant and bonding effect simultaneously, wetting agent has direct effect on properties of wet mass and extrudate, thus affecting the forming quality of pellets in extrusion-spheronization process. In this research, 25 representative kinds of traditional Chinese medicine(TCM) were selected as model drugs and 20%, 30% and 40% drug loading were set with MCC as their balling agent. The torque rheological curves were measured to get parameters such as maximum torque (Tmax) and corresponding water addition (WTmax) for these 75 raw materials by a mixer torque rheometer (MTR).The results showed that among 75 representative raw materials, 74 ones could be obtained for spherical pellets under the water addition of WTmax-2. corresponding to the second largest torque in torque rheological curve, suggesting that MTR could be used to select the optimal wetting agent dosage of TCM pellets. So the tedious and expensive pre-production work could be considerably reduced when TCM pellets were prepared.

Keywords: extrusion-spheronization; mixer torque rheometer; traditional Chinese medicine (TCM) pellet; wetting agent.