Hw. Hui et D. Miller, GRANULATION MOISTURE-CONTENT ANALYSIS - AN EVALUATION OF 2 INSTRUMENTS, Drug development and industrial pharmacy, 22(11), 1996, pp. 1145-1151
Reliable methods of determining moisture content of granulations are e
ssential to develop products that are readily and consistently manufac
tured. This study evaluated two instruments for loss on drying (LOD) m
easurement, the Computrac model MA-5 and the Mark-I. Both instruments
were evaluated using the USP oven method for LOD determination as a st
andard. All of these instruments/methods involved thermogravimetric an
alysis (TGA). Computrac MA-5 utilizes a heating coil as heat source an
d Mark-I uses four parallel quartz infrared heaters as heat source. Re
sults showed that the Mark-I moisture analyzer and the oven method gav
e values much Closer to those predicted for the compounds tested, whil
e the Computrac seems to be inconsistent in determining the LOD of mat
erials which are in equilibrium with their bound water of hydration an
d their evolved volatile compounds.