Filling machine

To prevent contact with oxygen, the beer in the pressure tanks is exposed only to a carbon dioxide atmosphere. The pressure must be higher than the saturation pressure for carbon dioxide. Infection in the brewery is prevented by daily cleaning and disinfection of all equipment in contact with the beer. In the past, almost all the beer left the brewery in kegs, but today most beer is bottled or caimed. The ratio is different from country to country. The growing share of beer in bottles or cans has provided a great need for filling machines with capacities of up to 100,000 bottles or cans per hour. 

Carbon dioxide is used to increase the natural CO2 content of the beer and as counterpressure in tanks and filling machines. It must be free of water and any aroma. The consumption is 0—10 g/L of beer produced. In major breweries, carbon dioxide is bought in bulk, and in many breweries it is common practice to coUect the surplus CO2 from the fermentors to clean, dehumidify, and compress in a local CO2 plant which is easily automated. 

Barrier and type of bag construction material Filling-machine characteristic Conveying, handling, and storage conditions ... 

It kg Avg Instant oz gr Package setup, supply FiUing- machine operators Package closers PaUetizers, loaders, attendants Package conveyorized Automatic palletizing Filling machine System ... 

FIGURE 12.35 (o) Filling machine fit>m the paint industry and (b) full-scale modd of the machine... 

The several types of filling machines in use in the pharmaceutical industry have in common the following operations ... 

Table 2 Selected Automatic Capsule-Filling Machines...

There are two types of piston-tamp fillers dosator machines and dosing-disc machines. In a recent survey of equipment used in production, it was found that dosator machines are used slightly more frequently than dosing disc machines, with about 18% of the companies responding reporting that they use both types of filling machines [50]. 

Fig. 9 Hofliger Karg model GKF 1500 automatic capsule-filling machine. (Courtesy of Robert Bosch Corp., Packaging Machinery Division, South Plainfield, NJ.)... 

Modern automatic capsule-filling machines offer enormous flexibility in terms of what can be filled into... 

E. Instrumentation of Capsule-Filling Machines and Their Role in Formulation Development... 

Fig. 16 Typical force-time trace from an instrumented Zanasi LZ-64 automatic capsule-filling machine. PC, precompression resulting from dipping of dosator into the powder bed C, compression resulting from actual piston tamping R, retention force Ej, ejection D, drag force developing during retraction of piston. (From Ref. 38.)...

Fig. 17 Effect of powder bed height, piston height, and compression force on plug ejection force in an instrumented Zanasi LZ-64 automatic capsule-filling machine (pregelatinized starch lubricated with 0.005% magnesium stearate). Note that the first point of each curve is precompression. Piston height (mm) , 15 -jlf, 14 , 13 , 12. Powder bed height (mm) heavy line, 30 light line, 50. (From Ref. 51.)...

Piezoelectric transducers have also been used to instrument automatic capsule filling machines. Mony et al. [72] instrumented a Zanasi RV/59 by fitting a piezoelectric load cell to the upper end of a piston. This... 

K Ito, S-I Kaga, Y Takeya. Studies on hard gelatin capsules II. The capsule filling of powders and effects of glidant by ring filling machine-method. Chem Pharm Bull 17 1138-1145, 1969. 

KB Shah, LL Augsburger, LE Small, GP Polli. Instrumentation of a dosing disc automatic capsule filling machine. Pharm Tech 7(4) 42-54, 1983. 

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