Flodex™ Powder Flowability Testing System

Raw materials may vary in significant ways when coming from different suppliers or different lots/batches. Such variations can affect the powder’s ability to flow freely when loaded into manufacturing equipment, thereby disrupting the quality and efficiency of the manufacturing process.

The Flodex™ is an easy-to-use tool for determining the flowability index of a powder over an arbitrary scale of 4 to 40. This index can be used as a specification for raw materials. The test takes into account numerous parameters that affect powder flowability, such as:

  • Particle size and shape
  • “Fines”
  • Unit surface area
  • Actual density and bulk density
  • Porosity
  • Settling characteristics
  • Electrostatic charges

The Flodex™ intrinsic flowability method is based on the ability of a powder to fall freely through an orifice in a disk. The system comes with a set of 19 disks with orifice sizes ranging from 4 mm to 34 mm. When used in pharmaceutical manufacturing applications the Flodex™ system is fully compliant with USP <1174> Powder Flow.