Tablets in effervescent form mainly adopt organic acid and basic bicarbonate to react as effervescent disintegrant. When placed in water, an effervescent reaction occurs immediately, generating and releasing a large amount of carbon dioxide gas and producing foam. This kind of tablet is generally used to carry medicine, or cleaning products such as biological enzyme lotion. Effervescent tablets are a good choice as a dietary supplement.
What Are Effervescent Tablet?
The prescription of effervescent tablets consists of the main drug, diluent, adhesive, disintegrant, lubricant, and other excipients. The diluent, adhesive, lubricant, and other excipients used are the same as those of ordinary tablets, and the appropriate varieties should be selected according to the preparation process.
Unlike ordinary tablets, the disintegrant used in effervescent tablets is an effervescent tablet. The disintegrants of effervescent tablets include acid sources and alkali sources. Commonly used acid sources include citric acid, malic acid, boric acid, tartaric acid, malic acid, inorganic mineral acid (hydrochloric acid), etc.; commonly used alkali sources include sodium bicarbonate, sodium carbonate, and a mixture of the two.
The acid-base ratio has a significant effect on the preparation and stability of effervescent tablets. It is generally believed that the amount of acid used exceeds the theoretical amount, which is conducive to the stability and taste of the effervescent tablets.
Why Effervescent Tablets Are Used?
Compared with ordinary tablets, effervescent tablets have the advantages of novel dosage form, good taste, high bioavailability, convenience to carry and transport, etc. Its disadvantages are the complex production process, high cost, and strict packaging requirements. At present, effervescent tablets are widely used in the fields of medicine, food, health products, solid beverages, and pet medicines.
According to the composition of different raw materials. Effervescent tablets can be divided into four categories: tea effervescent tablets, fruit and vegetable effervescent tablets, vitamin effervescent tablets, and trace element supplement effervescent tablets, of which vitamin effervescent tablets are the most common.
Vitamin C effervescent tablet is a medicine with adjuvant therapy. Therefore, vitamin C effervescent tablet has its medicinal value.
- Convenient to take and quick to take effect.
- High bioavailability and remarkable clinical effect.
- The flavored effervescent tablet tastes better and people are more willing to accept it.
- Improve the body’s vitamin content and restore body functions.
- Prevent various acute and chronic infectious diseases, scurvy, and other diseases.
- Promote antibody production and inhibit excessive proliferation of cells.
Guide to Taking Effervescent Tablets
Correct Method of Taking
Dissolving medium: It needs to be brewed with warm water at about 40℃ to avoid excessive water temperature that will damage the active ingredients of vitamin C; tea or beverages are prohibited to prevent reactions with the chemicals in them.
Drinking time: It should be consumed immediately after dissolution. Long-term storage will cause vitamin C to oxidize and become ineffective.
Oral protection: Rinse your mouth with clean water after taking it to avoid residual acidic substances from eroding tooth enamel.
Contraindications and Risk Warnings
Risk of sodium intake: Effervescent tablets contain high sodium. Long-term excessive use may induce hypertension or aggravate cardiovascular and cerebrovascular diseases.
People who should use with caution: Patients with hyperlipidemia, hypertension and those with a family history of related diseases should strictly limit the frequency and dosage of use; the elderly need to monitor their blood pressure regularly and follow a low-salt diet during medication.
Supervision of Special Populations
Children’s medication: It must be taken under the full supervision of an adult to avoid the risk of accidentally swallowing dry tablets or choking.
Effervescent VS Tablet Vitamin C
Are effervescent and tablet vitamin C the same in effect?
Vitamin C tablets are medicines, used for the treatment of vitamin C deficiency, strengthen the body’s resistance, prevent allergies, and also have the effect of the ascorbic acid disease. Vitamin C effervescent tablets are health products, neither of which can be taken for a long time.
- Different properties: Vitamin C has a structure similar to glucose and is a polyhydroxy compound. Vitamin C effervescent tablets, the indication is to enhance the body’s resistance, are used to prevent and treat various acute and chronic infectious diseases or other diseases.
- Different coating: Vitamin C effervescent tablets are white or slightly yellowish tablets, with small yellow spots scattered on one side. Vitamin C is a white crystal or crystalline powder.
- Different components: Vitamin C forms antibodies and collagen, tissue repair (including some redox effects), metabolism of phenylalanine, tyrosine, and folic acid, utilization of iron and carbohydrates, and synthesis of fats and proteins. Each vitamin C effervescent tablet contains 1.0 g of vitamin C. The excipients are lactose, citric acid, and sodium bicarbonate.
Effervescent Tablets Manufacturing Process
Effervescent tablets are mainly manufactured using two types of processes:
- Granulation followed by tableting: This includes wet granulation and dry granulation. Among these, wet granulation is currently the most commonly used.
- Direct compression: Involves compressing powders or crystalline materials directly into tablets, suitable only for materials with good compressibility and flowability.
The Purpose of Granulation
The fine powder of the material has poor fluidity and is not easy to flow into the die hole evenly, which affects the accuracy of the weight of the effervescent tablet. After being made into granules, the problem of difficulty in tableting caused by poor fluidity can be overcome.
The gap between the granules and the powder contains a certain amount of air. When tableting, part of the air in the powder does not have time to escape and is compressed in the effervescent tablet; when the pressure is released, the air inside the effervescent tablet will expand, causing loose cracking; at the same time, powder tableting has high requirements for the tablet press and is easy to damage the machine. After the granules are made into tablets, the pressure requirement is smaller than that of the powder. Because the surface of the granules is uneven, it has an “interlocking” effect, which can overcome quality problems such as cracking of the effervescent tablet.
The specific gravity of different raw material powders in the ingredients is quite different. During the tableting process, due to the vibration of the tablet press, the light and heavy components are separated, and the pressed sugar tablets have inconsistent components and uneven content.
It solves the quality problems such as easy adhesion of fine powder and avoids the flying of fine powder when the powder is directly pressed.
Due to the above reasons, except for some crystalline raw and auxiliary materials that can be directly pressed into tablets, powdered raw and auxiliary materials generally need to be made into granules before being pressed into tablets.
Wet Granulation Process
The preparation method of the effervescent tablet wet granulation is as follows: the acid and alkali and suitable raw and auxiliary materials are divided into groups to make soft materials and granules with a binder, and the groups are dried, sizing and mixed and then compressed. The specific operation methods include a one-step method, two-step method, three-step method, and fusion method. The so-called one-step method is to divide the granulation into several groups, and the three-step method is to appropriately divide the raw and auxiliary materials and the acid-base system into three groups, respectively make soft materials and wet particles, and dry them in groups.
The process:
- Preparation and pretreatment of raw and auxiliary materials: Before granulation, the raw and auxiliary materials generally need to be crushed, sieved or dried. The fineness of the materials is generally suitable to pass through a 80-100 mesh sieve.
- Material mixing: Pour various materials into the mixer and mix evenly according to the requirements of the formula.
- Making soft materials: Put the mixed materials in a trough mixer, stir and mix, and add an appropriate amount of wetting agent or adhesive.
- Making wet granules: Sieve the soft material through a suitable screen to form wet granules. Oscillating granulating for mass production, the granules should be complete, and without too much fine powder When sieving, if it is long or coarse particles will be firm, and particles containing fine powder will be loose. The easy-to-split tablets should make the granules firmer, and the compressed sugar that is sticky and difficult to disintegrate should be made into looser granules.
- Drying: After the wet granules are made, they should be dried immediately, since they may be deformed or agglomerated under pressure after long rotation.
- Granulating: The wet granule is called dry granule after being dried. During the drying process, a part of the particles adhere to each other into agglomerates, so they must be sieved and granulated to become uniformly sized granules that are easy to be compressed into tablets. The dry granules are sieved by a granulator to prevent too much fine powder, and then add the lubricant that has been sieved, and mix well. If it is necessary to add dry starch as a disintegrant, it should also be added during the granulating process.
- Total Mixing: It is the last operation of dry granule processing. The purpose is to make the various components in the dry granule uniform. The V-shaped mixer is commonly used in production.
- Pressing: the process of pressing the granules into a tablet press. The press operation steps are as follows: adjust the tablet weight of the produced varieties to make them consistent; add materials, pressing, and pushing tablets, completed.
- Selection: reject unqualified effervescent tablet in the formed pressed slices.
- Packaging: use a blister packaging machine or pillow packaging machine which needs to be sealed, airtight, beautiful, and complete.
Effervescent tablets produced by the wet granulation process are prone to moisture absorption and cracking.
Fluid Bed Granulation
The operation steps of mixing the raw materials and auxiliary materials, adding the binder, stirring and granulating, and drying are completed in one piece of equipment, which is also called one-step granulation.
Dry Granulation
Generally, the rolling method is used. After the materials are evenly mixed, they are uniformly rolled by a rolling machine and pressed into thin slices with the required hardness and thickness. After mixing, it can be compressed into tablets. However, since the pressed sheet is easy to stratify and may produce splits when the sheet is formed, and the equipment used is huge, this method has not been widely used.
Direct Compression
Refers to the method of directly compressing the raw materials after sieving and mixing.
In addition to direct powder compression, there is also a crystal direct compression process. Certain crystalline granular materials have good fluidity and compressibility, and many materials containing crystal water can be directly compressed by adding appropriate lubricants. However, it is easy to burst in the process of tablet pressing.
At present, the dry-method direct compression process still has certain defects, and the requirements for the tablet press are high. This large pressure will cause serious wear on the tablet press and die, which will greatly shorten the service life of the equipment. During the process, the powder will fly, which not only pollutes the production environment but also endangers the health of employees. It also causes waste of raw and auxiliary materials and increases production costs.
What Machines Will Be Used for Effervescent Tablet Manufacturing?
Effervescent Tablet Granulation
Crusher: The crushing function of the crusher includes shearing, impacting, grinding, squeezing, splitting, and so on. There are mainly two types: impact high-speed crusher and round screen wind-driven high-speed crusher.
Mixer: A trough mixer is often used when making soft materials; a mixer is often used when adding lubricant before pressing, such as a V-shaped mixer, that is, the particles and auxiliary materials are placed in the mixing machine and rotated for a suitable time.
Granulating Machine: Oscillating granulating machines and rotary granulation machines are mostly used. Rotary granulation machines are better, which can prevent the metal from being brought into the granulates due to the rupture of the screen.
Effervescent Tablet Drying
Drying oven: drying oven with simple structure. When drying with this type of dryer, the soluble components contained in the particles can “migrate” between the particles, causing differences in the content of soluble components between the particles, affecting the uniformity of the sugar slices, so frequently flip the particles in the disc during drying. This can not only reduce the difference in the content of soluble components between the particles but also speed up the drying. It usually takes 2 hours.
Fluidized bed dryer: A method in which wet particles are “fluidized” with hot air, and heat exchange and drying are carried out in the fluidized state.
Fluidized spray granulation: Also known as the one-step granulation method, this method can complete mixing, granulation, drying, etc. in one set of equipment.
Drying chamber and fluidized bed drying equipment each have their own advantages and disadvantages. The advantage of drying box is that it can be applied to multi-variety and small batch production, but the drying time is long, the labor intensity is high, and the production efficiency is low. The advantages of fluidized bed are low drying temperature, uniform drying, and high thermal energy utilization. It is easy to operate, has a large output, high labor productivity, and is suitable for continuous operation of the same variety. However, due to the size and structure of the equipment, it is not easy to clean.
Effervescent Tablet Press
Single-punch tablet machine: generally used for trial production of new products or small-volume production.
Rotary tablet press: It is a widely used tablet press at present. The feeding method is reasonable, the difference in tablet weight is small, the upper and lower sides are pressurized, the pressure is distributed evenly, and the output is high.
Double-layer and multi-layer tablet machine: it is a special equipment for double-layer and multi-layer tablet sugar. Equipped with matching hopper and quantitative feeder, the structure principle is similar to that of the rotary tablet press.
Effervescent Tablet Packaging
Effervescent candies and tablets can be packaged using various methods such as pillow-type heat sealing, folding packs, or small cylindrical plastic bottles. One of the most common forms is blister packaging, which typically involves a combination of plastic blisters and aluminum foil to protect the tablets.
Currently, the most widely used packaging for effervescent tablets on the market is tube packaging. Due to the sensitive nature of pharmaceutical products, high standards are required for moisture resistance and airtight sealing. Effervescent tablet tubes are commonly made from polyethylene, with moisture resistance primarily achieved through the specialized design of the cap.
The cap is composed of silica gel, a spiral spring, and a small compartment. The silica gel acts as a desiccant to absorb moisture, preventing the tablets from degrading due to humidity. The spiral spring protects the tablets from movement and damage during transport. This structure isolates the desiccant from direct contact with the tablets, avoiding contamination and reducing the risk of accidental ingestion by children. The tight seal between the cap and the tube body helps maintain a stable internal environment, ensuring long-term product quality.
Fully automatic plastic tube filling machines use PLC centralized control and are equipped with various detection systems such as fiber optic and photoelectric sensors to ensure stable performance and reliable automated operation.
Effervescent tablet tube filling machines are specifically designed for packaging large, thin tablets. They arrange the tablets in a single line and load them into the tubes in an orderly, stacked manner.
Conclusion
With deep expertise in tablet formulation, granulation, and packaging, manufacturers are able to deliver high-quality effervescent tablets that meet consumer expectations while complying with stringent regulatory standards.
SED Pharma offers GMP-compliant effervescent tablet production and packaging equipment solutions. Our equipment is energy-efficient and customizable to meet your specific needs.
Looking to upgrade your effervescent tablet production line? Contact us today for a free consultation!
