company news about Conventional Coating Pan - Introduction, Types, and Industrial Use

Pharma companies use multiple types of machinery for manufacturing and packaging processes before their final product is ready to be distributed in retail pharmacy stores. One such important contributing machine is Conventional Coating Pan. As the name suggests, this one is one of the traditional methods of coating film or sugar on the medicine depending upon the requirements. Coating pan is utilized to create a coat around the pellets with the help of some aqueous or organic film. The components of this device include a semi ellipsoidal pan fitted with a circular cover to facilitate the charging and discharging of tablets. This pan is rotated with the help of a motor and a gear. It also has a hot air blowing unit inside which helps to vaporize the moisture content in the medicine pellet.

Types & Processes of the Coating Pan

The main coating processes used in Pharma Companies are film coating and sugar coating. Sugar coating is the old technique to coat the bulk tablets with sugar. Sugar coating is a complex multistage process which comprise of six different steps. These steps are sealing of the tablet core, sub coating of the core, then smoothing, coloring, polishing and then the final printing.

Whereas in Film coating, there is a polymer coating outside tablets, capsules, etc. Unlike sugar coating, this type of coating is only one step process. Medicines are generally coated with a single spray using polymer, solvent, colorant or plasticizer. The solution is sprayed onto the medicine inside the rotating cover and is followed by drying. After drying the excess solvent is removed and a thin film of coating stays on the pellets.

There are three types of conventional coating pans. Besides conventional coating pan, there are perforated coating pans.
Pellegrini Pan

This type of pan is available in different sizes ranging from 10- 1000 kg. Pellegrini Pan has the provision for baffled pan as well as a diffuser. The combination of this type of fan and diffuser helps to distribute the uniform heat. This pan has a limitation that it can only be maneuvered with sugar coating but not with a film coating. The reason behind this limitation lies in the pan's incapability to evenly heat the solution and thus it doesn't get uniformly dried in the film coating pattern.
Immersion Sword Coating Pan

They are further categorized into PLG and GS system. They differ because of the process of the entry and exit of hot air into the system. PLG system has the inlet through a sword structure. Exhaust air is removed through the plenum. In the GS system, the inlet is via plenum and the exhaust air leaves the system through two perforated systems.
Conventional Coating Pan Industrial Use

The Coating Pan finds its immense use with Pharma Industry, Food industry. Pharma is a very closely monitored industry which requires automation and highly equipped machine which can avoid chances of error. So for a solid dose, there is a need for such machines.