Herbal pills refer to spherical or quasi-spherical preparations made of fine powder of medicinal materials or medicinal material extracts with suitable adhesives or other auxiliary materials.
According to the applicable auxiliary materials, it can be divided into: honey pill, water pill, water pill, taki pill, concentrated pill, Chinese medicine pill.
According to different manufacturing methods, it is divided into pan-system method, molding method and drip-system method.
Advantages of Chinese Medicine Pills
The effect is mild and lasting, with less side effects than chemical drugs
Can hold more semi-solid or liquid drugs
Expensive, aromatic drugs that should not be decocted for a long time could be made into pills
After coating, it can mask the bad smell of the drug and improve the stability of the drug
Disadvantage of Chinese Medicine Pills
Large dosage and difficulty in swallowing for children, not suitable for emergency medication
Low bioavailability; susceptible to microbial contamination and mold deterioration
Excipients of Chinese Medicine Pills
The commonly used auxiliary materials of Chinese medicine pills mainly include wetting agents, adhesives, absorbents or diluents.
Adhesive
Commonly used adhesives are honey, rice paste or batter, clear (extract) ointments, syrup, etc.
Honey
Raw honey must be heated and refined before reuse to remove excess water, increase viscosity, kill microorganisms and destroy enzymes, and make refined honey to ensure its stability and purification purposes. Refined honey is divided into three specifications: tender honey, medium honey and old honey.
-Tender honey honey is heated to 105~115℃, the water content is about 18%~20%, and the relative density is about 1.34
-Medium honey The tender honey continues to be heated to 116~118℃, the water content is 14%~16%, and the relative density is about 1.37
-Old honey medium honey continues to be heated to 119~122℃, the water content is about 10% or less, and the relative density is about 1.40
Rice Batter or Batter
A paste made from fine powder of yellow rice, glutinous rice, wheat and divine song
Herbal Clear (Infusion) Ointment
Most of the clear (extract) ointments prepared by the leaching method of botanical medicinal materials have strong viscosity.
Syrup
Commonly used sucrose syrup or liquid glucose, which is both viscous and reducing, is suitable for pill preparation of highly viscous and easily oxidized drugs.
Wetting Agents
Water, wine, vinegar, honey, concoction
Absorbent
The medicinal materials with high powder output in the prescription are made into fine powder, which is used as an absorbent for extracts and volatile oil. Inert inorganic substances such as aluminum hydroxide, calcium carbonate, calcium glycerophosphate, magnesium oxide or magnesium carbonate can also be used as absorbents.
Preparation Method of Herbal Pills
-Pan-manufacturing method: In a rotating container or machine, the fine powder is alternately wetted with a humidifier or adhesive, sprayed, and continuously rolled, gradually increasing.
-Molding method: Mixing medicinal powder with suitable auxiliary materials (mainly wetting agents or binders) to make pellets with suitable hardness and greater plasticity, and then rolling, dividing and rounding to make pills.
-Dropping method: The solid or liquid medicine is heated and melted with a suitable matrix, and then dissolved, emulsified or suspended in the matrix, and then dropped into the immiscible and non-interacting condensate. The drop shrinks into a spherical shape due to the effect of surface tension.
Pill Making Equipment of Pan-making Method
Various Chinese medicinal materials for pill making are selected, impurities are removed, washed, dried, and weighed.
Sterilization
Use a sterilization machine to sterilize Chinese herbal medicines
Chinese Herbal Medicine Grinder
Grinder can crush Chinese herbal medicine into powder. Crushing Fineness ranges from 60mm-320mm
The crushing unit is made up of crusher, collecting box and vacuum cleaner.
Commercial herb grinding machine is mainly used in medical, food, chemical industries. There is no limiting for the material of viscosity and hardness, it almost can use all material. Especially for the traditional Chinese medical material and the oiliness material, such as chili powder, turmeric powder, herb medicine powder, tobacco powder, grain powder and sugar salt powder etc..
Sifting Machine
For sieving powder, you can choose vibrating powder sieving machine, The vibrating sieving machine is a high-precision fine powder sieving machine, with low noise and high efficiency. It takes 3-5 minutes to change the screen quickly. The fully enclosed structure is suitable for screening and filtering of materials like granules, powders and mucus. The rotary vibrating screen consists a vertical motor as the excitation source vibration focus. The upper and lower ends of the motor are equipped with eccentric weights. Convert the rotating motion of the motor into a horizontal, vertical, and inclined three-dimensional motion, and then transfer this motion to the screen surface. Adjust the phase angle of the upper and lower ends. The trajectory of the material on the screen surface can be changed. Achieving fine sieving.
Three-Dimensional Motion Mixer
Three-dimensional mixers are commonly known as “multi-directional motion mixers”. They are widely used in pharmaceutical, chemical, food, metallurgical, light industry and other industries and scientific research institutions. They can mix powder or granular materials with good fluidity very uniformly, so that The materials can reach a mixed state. During the operation of the machine, due to the multi-directional operation of the mixing barrel, the flow and diffusion of various materials are accelerated during the mixing process, meanwhile, the segregation and accumulation of the specific gravity of the materials caused by the centrifugal force is avoided. Without dead corner, which can effectively ensure the quality of the mixture.
Tablet Coating Pan
Also known as sugar coating pan; mainly composed of pan, electrical control system, and heating device. Put powder in the sugar-coated pan, spray the wetting agent onto the powder with a sprayer, turn the sugar-coated pan or manually knead to make the powder evenly wetted and become fine particles, continue to turn into pills, and then sprinkle powder and wetting agent, gradually enlarging the pill mold into a solid, compact, smooth, round, and suitable size pill.
The tablet coating machine integrates coloring, coating and drying in one. It is one of the indispensable machines in the production process of pills.
The rotation of the pot body is generally driven by a worm gear and a worm reducer by a motor through a V-belt, which can make the material roll up and down in the pot. In the pan-manufacturing process, preheated air and auxiliary heaters can be used to dry the particles. It is also possible to use a hot-air circulating oven to dry the pills, with higher production efficiency.
Drum-type Pill Screening Machine
It is the main screening equipment in the production process of Chinese medicine pellets. It can automatically complete the sorting of the pills to ensure the measurement tolerance and uniformity of the finished pills. It is widely used in the screening of herbal pills and round materials in other industries.
Drum-type pill screening machine is mainly composed of a roller device, a reducer, a motor, a cleaning device inside the screen, a bottom bracket, a sealing cover, a discharge port, and a feed port. The cylinder is slanted, and the cylinder is covered by a dust cover. There is almost no material and noise pollution during the production process.
Pharmaceutical Machinery of Molding Method equipment
Weigh the materials. After being crushed, sieved, and evenly mixed, it is ready for use. The machines required for these processes are pulverizers, sieving machines and mixers, which are the same as those used in the pan-manufacturing method.
In the case of small-volume production, the pellets can be cut into equal parts and then the pellets can be rubbed by the rolling plate circle to make the pills. A pellet mill. Is good for large-scale production.
At present, in large-scale production, manufacturers mostly use machines that can directly synthesize pellets into pills, such as automatic pill making machine.
Fully Automatic Pill Making Machine
After the pellets are quickly fed into the feed port, they are squeezed by a screw propeller to make medicine strips of the same specifications. Under the tracking of the photoelectric speed measuring device, they pass the guide wheel and the sequencer into the pill making wheel synchronously. After fast cutting and rounding by two cutter wheels, uniform-sized pills are made.
Packaging of Pills
Honey pills and concentrated pills are often packed in a plastic spherical shell, and then seal the shell with a wax layer or wrap with wax paper, and pack in a carton. The medicine containing aromatic volatile or precious fine materials could be sealed in wax shell and then packed into metal, silk or carton. Big honey pills can also be packaged in blister aluminum-plastic materials. Generally, the pills are usually sealed in glass or plastic bottles. Pills containing aromatic drugs or more expensive drugs are usually sealed with porcelain vials.
Pills should be sealed and stored, and wax pills should be sealed and stored in a cool and dry place.
Depending on the packaging method selected, the packaging machinery used will be different.
- Bottle Container: Capsule bottling line consists of bottle unscrambler, capsule counting machine, automatic desiccant/cotton inserting machine, automatic linear capping machine, aluminum foil sealing machine, labeling machine, etc.
- Unscrambler can turn the bottles which are upside down automatically and then transfer the bottles to the conveyor belt. High speed bottle unscramble could reach the capacity of 20～80 bottles/min.
- Automatic tablet capsule counting machine adopts the principle of photoelectric to quantitatively count the pills into containers according to the set quantity, and can monitor and set all the running data in real time.
- Automatic cotton inserting machinecan automatically cut strip absorbent cotton and insert the piece of cotton into the container accurately and speedily, taking the place of the previous manual operation. The output could be 60-100 bottles per minute.
- Automatic linear capping machine is a special equipment for automatic capping of plastic bottles and glass bottles. The height of capping part can be adjusted.
- Aluminum foil sealing machine is widely used in the sealing of plastic bottles and glass bottles in the pharmaceutical, chemical, food, beverage, oil, cosmetic and other industries. Suitable for round, oblate, square and oblate bottles with a mouth diameter of 15-50mm.
- Labeling machine is suitable for labeling all kinds of round bottles, flat bottles, square bottles, special-shaped bottles in cosmetics, food, medicine, daily chemical and other light industries. The capacity of bottle labeling machine could reach 20-120 bottles/min
- Blister Packaging Machine: blister packaging equipment is commonly used in food and medical packaging industry, the shapes of blister and mold varies with the shape of the packaged goods.
- Cartoning machine: cartoning machine can stuff the sealed blister board and leaflet into the carton, the capacity of high speed cartoning machine could reach 30-100 boxes /min. Inkjet printing machine can also be connected to cartoning machine.
SED Pharma has been worked in pharmaceutical and packaging equipment manufacturing area for more than 12 years. With the growing demand for pharmaceutical production, we are committed to developing new technologies and improving product performance to meet our customers’ needs. Any interest in our equipment, please don’t hesitate to leave a inqury right away!