An Efficient Hybrid CFD-DEM Modeling Framework for Industrial Drum Coating Operations

Tablet coating is a common unit operation in pharmaceutical manufacturing. The coating process depends on a number of process variables – spray parameters, coater geometry, mass loading, drying air flow etc. Process engineers in the pharmaceutical industry are interested in optimizing coater operation from both process and product perspectives. Performing physical experiments with coaters to determine the optimal set of process parameters is, more often than not, impractical. Digital experiments using computer simulations of tablet coating offer a viable alternative to experiments. We present here an efficient hybrid CFD-DEM model framework that enables a relatively rapid and efficient optimization of the coating process. The approach described here is an effective alternative to full scale CFD/DEM co-simulation and is designed to provide useful design guidance to process engineers at a significantly reduced computational expense.