Experimental Study of Particle Size Reduction of Albendazole by Antisolvent Precipitation Method

Abstract

The dissolution rate of active pharmaceutical ingredients (API) is a crucial factor in deciding the drug formulation. The particle size of pharmaceutical product has a major role in determining the dissolution rate. Several techniques such as milling, spray drying and cooling, evaporative and antisolvent crystallization are used for particle size reduction in pharmaceutical industry. In this work, Albendazole, which has high permeability and low aqueous solubility, is taken as model drug to recrystallize by liquid antisolvent process. Ethanol, acetone, dimethylformamide (DMF) and dimethyl sulfoxide (DMSO) were used as solvent and water an antisolvent. Albendazole was dissolved in solvent and then solution was mixed with antisolvent. A suspension was formed after mixing which was centrifuged and then average particle size was calculated zetasizer. It was found that average size of Albendazole was decreased from 1.8 µm to 0.62 µm in ethanol, 1.1 µm in acetone, 0.79 µm in DMF and 0.53 µm in DMSO.

Keywords: Dissolution rate, crystallization, Albendazole, solubility, antisolvent