Drying

A major pharma company installed FT-NIR probes to monitor several fluidised bed dryers. The previous procedure was to dry the product for 36 hours, but the results from the NIR showed that the product reached the specification for residual water after 9 hours. A system was implemented where the plant operators received a signal via a pager when a batch was dried to specification. 

RESULT: 300% reduction in energy costs. potential 300% increase in plant utilisation, and an improvement in product quality since the previous procedure had always resulted in the product being over-dried.

Talk to Clairet about spectroscopy for process improvement.