Process to manufacture effervescent tablets: air forced oven melt granulation.

In the present study we apply melt granulation in an air forced oven, called "are forced oven melt granulation" to the single-stage manufacture of effervescent granules consisting of anhydrous citric acid (43.2%) and sodium bicarbonate (56.8%) in order to make tablets. This study established that process parameters such as concentration of PEG 6000, residence time in the air forced oven, fineness of PEG 6000, fineness of the initial effervescent mix and efficiency of two lubricants markedly influenced several granule and tablet characteristics. The granules ready to be compressed into tablets were stable for 7 days at 60% RH/18 degrees C. It is a dry, simple, rapid, effective, economical, reproducible process particularly well suited to the manufacture of effervescent granules which are easily compressed into effervescent tablets. Of all the formulations tested, only formulations B2 and E2 melt granulated for 30 minutes gave tablets which had optimum compression characteristics without processing problems during compression.