Jay Swarup, Entry #2, More experiments!

Hey all,
The past few weeks have really flown by for me. I have just completed my third week at the Ramachandran Lab. Just to remind everyone, I am researching in pharmaceutical tablet manufacturing in a chemical engineering lab. My first week at the lab was focused on making tablets, but afterwards, it shifted to analyzing what exactly was in the tablet. So, after we made the tablets, we decided to check the uniformity of the active pharmaceutical ingredient in the tablet using the raman spectroscopy machine. After this experiment was finished, another one was started. This experiment used a method of high shear continuous granulation and the goal was to increase the particle size of the granules. So, to do this, we granulated the powder using the high shear continuous granulation. A picture of this machine is below.

After the granulation process, we used the laser diffraction machine to measure the particle size distribution. This machine completes the process in less than 3 minutes for each batch. A picture of this machine is below.

This experiment was finished today with good results. Now, I am working on another project with similar goals: making bigger granules after performing high shear continuous granulation.

Aside from working in the lab, I have also been doing a lot of other fun stuff this summer. For example, I went to New York City on July 4th and saw some pretty amazing fireworks. Also, I have been playing a lot of basketball with friends and family this past summer.

I hope everyone is enjoying their summer!!