Custom granulation dryer designed for pharmaceuticals industry

7th August 2015

Industrial oven, furnace, and environmental temperature cycling and stability test chamber designer and manufacturer Thermal Product Solutions (TPS) announced last month that it had designed a custom industrial oven that serves as a granulation dryer for a leading pharmaceuticals manufacturer.

The high-capacity oven, which is used to cure solutions that become dry-dosage drugs, is capable of handling eight rolling trucks, filled with trays of product solution, simultaneously. Further, it can accommodate a total batch load of 4.72 t.

The pharmaceuticals manufacturer bought two of the 77-inch-wide, 84-inch-high, 173-inch-deep custom Gruenberg ovens, which feature modular construction in six sections to facilitate easy transport and setup.

The pharmaceuticals manufacturer approached TPS requesting the company to design an industrial oven that would uniformly remove excess moisture from prescription medications being produced using a three-dimensional (3D) printing process.

Gruenberg engineers developed a custom solution that includes a robotic gantry, heat-saving windows and internal actuators and sensors. The solution precisely positions and dries trays of 3D-printed pills to exact specifications.

To ensure the quality and uniformity of each pill, this new conveyor oven precisely times, loads, arranges, positions, heats, monitors and removes trays of pharmaceuticals, drying them to specific standards.

The oven has thin window slits, rather than a large door, to conserve heat and maintain precise temperature control of the 80 °C environment as trays of product enter and exit the chamber.