Participating date: April 28, 2022

Schedule: 11:00 AM – 11:25 AM / 2:00 PM – 2:25 PM

General Description: In Puerto Rico, there is a serious need to develop alternatives for effective recovery after a catastrophic event. During the latest events (i.e., hurricanes, earthquakes, and the COVID-19 pandemic) an area of improvement is the lack of available supplies due to the storage limited capacity of the island. One industry is constantly affected has been the pharmaceutical industry, since most of its raw material used for manufacture comes from foreign industries. This research focused on the use of dried whole-food particles obtained from local sweet potato and breadfruit in the preparation of food-based tablets. For this, the effect of varying the type of raw material (sweet potato and breadfruit), the method of cutting (cubes and chips), the addition of a binder to the formulation (0% and 2% PVP), and different compression forces (4, 6, and 8 metric tons) were studied to understand the effect on the tablet overall performance using common characterizations methods for tablet manufacture. To evaluate the raw food for this project, yam, yucca, taro, tanner, sweet potato, and breadfruit were processed using a simple manufacturing line and tablets friability and hardness were tested. Sweet potato and breadfruit were chosen for the general project since hardness values were greater than 4 kP and friability values were less than 1.5 %. To improve the formulation properties for both materials, the effect of the particle size distribution was evaluated using a Tukey method analysis on the hardness and friability tests. From this, it was demonstrated that varying the particle size distribution in breadfruit trials do not have any significant effect in the friability and hardness tests result, while in sweet potato had a significant effect in both tests. Next steps will be focused on correlating the physical characterization of particles with tablet behavior and evaluate the use of an automatic compressor for scale up this process. With this research, it will be possible to provide an alternative product for a pharmaceutical excipient that could reduce import and transportation costs, minimize storage dependency, and could even be later evaluated these particles as an emergency food source.

Interested Majors

Ingeniería Química (INQU)

Level of Education

Undergraduate 

Professor/Advisor

Prof. Carlos Velázquez Figueroa

Schedule

April 28, 2022

11:00 AM – 11:25 AM

2:00 PM – 2:25 PM

Google Meet Link

CLICK HERE TO JOIN

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