High shear mixer granulation using food grade binders with different thickening power

Mixer agglomeration, in particular high shear wet granulation, is a unit operation typically used in the pharmaceutical industry to improve the flowability, the compressibility, the dosing accuracy during tableting or the content uniformity of a blend. Thanks to its advantages (production of spherical and dense granules, reduction of production time), this technique can be potentially successful also in the food industry as for example in the production of dietary supplements. In this work four thickening agents (povidone, maltodextrin, k-carrageenan and xanthan gum) have been tested to study their effects on the granule growth behavior and on some technologically relevant granule properties (size, shape, strength and flowability). Experiments highlighted the full feasibility of the process and the possibility of using these agents to get products with satisfactory technological properties. The dependence of product properties on the formulation variables (water and binder amount) has ...