Improving the quality of crystalline particles and productivity during anti-solvent crystallization through continuous flow with high shear stress under low supersaturation condition

Ensuring the high quality and productivity of crystalline particles is challenging when only supersaturation is controlled. This study proposes a method based on the Taylor-Couette (TC) flow, which is a continuous high shear stress flow, to obtain fine crystalline particles with high productivity. Thus, the quality and productivity of the particles were investigated under various supersaturation conditions during antisolvent crystallization using the TC flow. Experimental results confirmed that using the TC flow produced crystalline particles with smaller sizes and improved size distributions. Furthermore, TC flow considerably increased productivity compared to conventional processes, particularly under low supersaturation conditions. Moreover, the superiority of the proposed method's productivity over conventional processes under low supersaturation conditions depends on the solution composition in the phase diagram. Particularly, the superiority of the proposed method's productivity excels in conditions where it is challenging to precipitate crystalline particles using conventional methods. Consequently, this study demonstrated that our proposed method using the TC flow is an effective approach to overcome the trade-off between improving productivity and quality in terms of supersaturation. (C) 2024 The Society of Powder Technology Japan. Published by Elsevier BV and The Society of Powder Technology Japan. All rights are reserved, including those for text and data mining, AI training, and similar technologies.