Impact of formulation and process variable on the preparation of acyclovir microspheres by spray drying using factorial design

Abstract

The aim of this work is to study the impact of polymer ratio and feed flow rate (ml/min) in the preparation of acyclovir microspheres by using spray drying technique. A 3² full factorial experiment was designed to study the effects of the polymer ratio and feed flow rate (ml/min) of spray dryer on the percent yield and encapsulation efficiency of microspheres. The result of analysis of variance test for both effects indicated that the test is significant. The effect of factor X₁ (polymer ratio) (SSY₁=120.96; SSY₂=357.38) is higher than factor X₂ (feed flow rate) (SSY₁=79.06; SSY₂=88.94) for optimizing the percent yield and encapsulation efficiency. The optimum polymer ratio (X₁) and feed flow rate (X₂) was found to be 3.68 and 10.00 ml/min respectively for obtaining higher percent yield and maximum encapsulation efficiency of microspheres which was found to be 33.26% and 91.23% respectively.