Pharmaceutical industry characteristics mixing

Table 1.1 summarizes the types of processes for generating nanoparticles that are currently involved in the top-down and bottom-up approaches (or their mixed variants). It should be noted that many of these processes have their origin and primary applications predominantly in the pharmaceutical industry so far the commercial food applications of nanotechnology are still in their infancy. For each of the processes mentioned in Table 1.1, the kinds of nanoparticles involved are listed along with a brief indication of their characteristic properties and their approximate particle dimensions. Also presented are some recent literature sources on these various topics (mainly review-type articles) where the interested reader can obtain further background material. 

Another very common industrial mixing process involving immiscible liquids is emulsification. This is frequently encountered in the food and pharmaceutical industries when very small liquid droplets are created in a second liquid phase. In these cases the resulting mixture is often stable and will separate only after long periods of time. Furthermore, the stable onul-sion will usually be relatively viscous and will often exhibit non-Newtonian rheological characteristics. The dynamics of emulsification is also treated in Chapter 14. 

Perhaps a major factor is the handling of batches. For instance, pharmaceutical plants usually handle fixed sizes for which integrity must be maintained (no mix-ing/splitting), while solvent or polymer plants handle variable sizes that can be split and mixed. Similarly, different requirements on processing times can be found in different industries depending on process characteristics. For example pharmaceutical applications might involve fixed times due to FDA regulations, while solvents or polymers have times that can be adjusted and optimized with process models. 

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