Continuous Crystallisation
The new breed of continuous oscillatory baffled reactors - such as the Cambridge Reactors 'Rattlesnake' and Nitech's DHN10 or DN15 units - promises a new way of thinking. Mixing is uniform and without shear; heat can be transferred rapidly even during plug flow; and the units are scalable by design. But these units pose the same challenges as in batch production: raw material quality is variable, which impacts final product quality, yield, waste and cost of manufacture.
The tools and techniques to solve this dilemma are already embedded within Perceptive's
PharmaMV platform. Individual, but closely-linked, Model Predictive Controllers were developed:
Temperature Profile: maintained at an optimum throughout the process unit
Super-Saturation: continuous adjustment of seed loading, based on concentrations derived from FTIR data
Particle Size: continuous adjustment of super-saturation levels, based on FBRM results
Quality, yield and throughput can all be optimised. Particle size distribution spread can be reduced by 30-60%
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