| Pharmaceutical industries are focused on the development of solid dosage forms of therapeutic compounds for many reasons. The advantage that the person can take the drugs in their house and leave hospital for real emergencies is the principal one. Although tablets and capsules are commonly used, the process to make them is long, costly, and governed by many factors, some actually uncontrollable.; The objective of this project was to demonstrate the feasibility of using the supercritical anti-solvent operation to produce pharmaceutical powders with desired particle size. Lactose, one of the most used components in tablets, was precipitated from lactose monohydrate-dimethyl sulfoxide solutions by three different methods. Two of them using supercritical carbon dioxide as anti-solvent at pressures between 80 and 300 bar, and in a temperature range of 40 to 60°C.; The results demonstrate that the particle size decreased for pressures between 200 to 250 bars, and increased for pressures between 250 to 300 bars for all temperatures studied. Spherical granules are obtained with different sizes that depend on the precipitation method employed. Adjusting the temperature and pressure can influence the particle sizes of the samples treated with supercritical CO2. |
