Why Metal detectors are used in the Pharmaceutical Industry

What if a metal entrapped tablet is taken by you, you can’t even think of it right. Regulations are set by regulatory authorities of different countries to prevent metal contamination in pharmaceutical products like tablets, capsules, powders, etc.

Metal detectors are used in pharmaceutical manufacturing to prevent metal particle contamination in the products. These metal detectors are attached to the manufacturing equipment like compression machine inline.

Why does metal contamination take place?

During pharmaceutical operations like sifting, milling, and granulation using a rapid mixer granulator, and compression of tablets there are possibilities of metal particle generation during granulation in a rapid mixer granulator the blades of RMG may strike the bottom surface leading to metal particle generation

And also, during sifting, the mesh may get damaged due to hard lumps, here also metal particles get generated and during compression if the feed frame is not fixed properly, it scraps the turret surface leading to metal particle generation and entrapment of metals in the tablets.

The above are some of the areas where metal particles generation takes place, but metal particles may also be present in excipients supplied, for that suppliers also must pass their products through metal detectors before supplying.

Metal detector: A metal detector is an equipment which detects and separates the metal particles from the pharmaceutical products. Different models of metal detectors are used by different companies depending on the need.

Working of metal detector:

Metal detectors detect the following metals like copper, aluminum, stainless steel, brass etc. these work by creating a magnetic field in the metal detector feed chute, if any metal particle is passes through these field, sensor will detect due to change in the already established magnetic field, and the metal contaminated tablet or any other material will be sent to the rejection box.

Metal detectors use at different stages of manufacturing

During tablet compression operation metal detectors are connected to the tablet DE dusters , here the tablets pass through the metal detector before collection into the containers.

During inspection after tablets got inspected for defects pass through the metal detectors where metal contaminated tablets gets rejected. In the next article we are going to know about the performance check of metal detector.