Engineers at Hosokawa Micron developed a two-storey contained system that fulfilled all of the customer’s needs and enabled significant production flexibility, from the processing of small R&D batches, to operation as a continuous production unit. The resulting system delivers maximal flexibility, offering a range of particle size and shape production along with a range of weighing and filling options. The system fulfills all of the customer’s requirements and generates genuine involvement from manufacturing personnel.
The integrated batch milling and packing system (figure on the right) is equipped with an upper tier, high containment isolator featuring an in-built pharmaceutical hammer mill. A lower tier laminar flow booth contains a flexible, continuous liner, filling and weighing system and HMI containment screens. The system is capable of handling batch volumes of up to 500L from the dryer positioned above and offers containment to Level 4 OEB, which will achieve containment repeatedly between 1 and 10µg/m3.
A fully contained environment is provided by the milling isolator during active product handling, thereby offering complete barrier isolation. The isolator is integrated into an existing product flow from a dryer located above the unit. The dryer feeds HAPI material into the pharmaceutical hammer mill at a controlled rate using hygienic rotary valves (figure on the left). The hammer mill can run at speeds of up to 6000rpm, depending on the particle size required.
The filling and weighing system is housed within a laminar flow booth located directly beneath the milling isolator, enabling direct material discharge to the filling packing head and maintaining the benefits of the small, compact footprint within space limitations. Once milled, material is gravity fed into continuous liner, single liners or 23L charge bottles situated on the fill/weigh platform via a 100mm charge point valve, to provide low containment product transfer.
