A concise summary of powder processing methodologies for flow enhancement

The knowledge of powder properties has been highlighted since the 19th century since most formulations focus on solid dosage forms, and powder flow is essential for various manufacturing operations. A poor powder flow may generate problems in the manufacturing processes and cause the plant's malfunction. Hence these problems should be studied and rectified beforehand by various powder flow techniques to improve and enhance powder flowability. The powder's physical properties can be determined using compendial and non-compendial methods. The non-compendial practices generally describe the powder response under the stress and shear experienced during their processing. The primary interest of the current report is to summarize the flow problems and enlist the techniques to eliminate the issues associated with the powder's flow properties, thereby increasing plant output and minimizing the production process inconvenience with excellent efficiency. In this review, we discuss powder flow and its measurement techniques and mainly focus on various approaches to improve the cohesive powder flow property. [Display omitted] •Elaborated factors affecting powder flow.•Types of flow include mass flow and core flow.•Different types of powder flow testers are described and compared.•Several techniques can be applied to improve flow of powders.•All the techniques reduce the intermolecular interactions.