2006 年 66 巻 6 号 p. 457-463
Crude drugs are usually supplied in the form of powder or flakes, which have various shapes and undesirable properties such as poor fluidity and adhesiveness. Those inherent properties often bring difficulty in handling and quality control in the manufacturing process of drug products. Therefore, the granulation of crude drug powders is considered to be meaningful for not only convenience of taking a granulated dosage form but also sequential tableting operation. We studied the granulation conditions of crude drug powders by the fluidized bed granulation method. Powdered Senna Leaf was selected as a model crude drug. The powders were pre-granulated with distilled water and sequentially granulated with 10% (w/v) hydroxy propyl cellulose (HPC) and dried until their temperature reacted 45°Cin the granulator. The properties of granules—size distribution, mean diameter, angle of repose, bulk density, strength and compressibility—were examined, and the correlation between those properties and volume of distilled water and HPC solution was analyzed by multiple regression analysis. The properties of crude drug granules were strongly affected by the volumes of distilled water and HPC solution. The relationship between various parameters mentioned above were shown as correlative equations. The regression analyses of them would give useful information for the preparation of granules that show desirable properties once the granulation operation has been experimentally done.
