Evolution and modelling of compacted binary mixture porosity. Application to pharmaceutical tablets

The purpose of this work consists in following physical property variations in relation with geometrical textural parameters during pharmaceutical component compaction. Models are developed to explain porosity variations of granular media submitted to increasing uniaxial pressure. These models are based on reaction mechanisms analogous to these presented in quasi chemical descriptions. Vacancy annihilation occurring when pressure increases is studied in two cases (with or without internal grain porosity). Reaction mechanisms describing different granular rearrangement phenomena are proposed. The behaviour of pure compounds as well as that of binary mixtures are studied from a theoretical point of view, and the model results proposed in this case are compared with the ones derived from experiments. In particular mixtures of one excipient, lactose, and one active principle, ketoprofen, are analysed in order to estimate porosity evolution of such mixtures, and determine mixture effects on tablet properties. The prediction limits which could be done by mixture models giving an expected behaviour starting from pure components only are discussed.