Advanced image analytics to study powder mixing in a novel laboratory scale agitated filter dryer

Powder mixing unit operations are essential to the manufacturing of pharmaceutical drug substance and drug products. To model powder mixing, computational approaches have been used to evaluate mixing indices for different types of mixers, while also necessitating experimental methods for tracking of particle dynamics for validation. In this work, the experimental mixing performance of two particle species of different particle size and densities in a novel laboratory agitator filter dryer (AFD) was evaluated by performing 3D X-ray microCT (mu CT) analysis. A new workflow, in which the mu CT images were pre-processed with image analytics of increasing complexity and fidelity from image thresholding to advanced AI-based image segmentation and 3D recon-struction, was demonstrated to derive powder mixing indices. The AFD device which enables a customizable laboratory equipment for scale-down experimentation of agitated drying was shown to be capable of achieving a uniform powder mixture with micromixed cluster domain size.

Automated summary

Powder mixing unit operations are crucial in pharmaceutical manufacturing. Computational approaches are used to evaluate mixing indices, while experimental methods are needed for particle dynamics tracking and validation. This study evaluated the mixing performance of two particle species in a novel laboratory agitator filter dryer (AFD) using 3D X-ray microCT analysis. A new workflow was demonstrated to derive powder mixing indices using image analytics and 3D reconstruction. The AFD device enables customizable scale-down experiments and achieves uniform powder mixture with small cluster size.