From powder to pills

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About the research

About the research

Have you ever wondered how pills are made? A powder flows through a production line, falls into a hole, and gets compressed into a pill. Easy, right? And yet a lot can go wrong: the powder can get stuck or the pill may not be filled (enough). Because it would take too much time to test each new powder mixture in a real production line, chemical engineer Margot Coppens (KU Leuven - Janssen Belgium) uses computer models. This allows her to virtually test the powder mixtures and anticipate possible production problems.

Health
Technology
Margot Coppens
KU Leuven

Powders seem to be a recurring theme in Margot’s life. Not only does she love shredding powder snow on her snowboard and riding her gravelbike on dusty roads; but also powder is at the core of her research. Her PhD focuses on the flowability of pharmaceutical powders, to improve continuous tablet production. She is taking a chemical engineering approach by modelling the powder flow, in this collaboration between Janssen Pharmaceutica and KU Leuven.

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