What industry uses crystallization?

What Is Crystallization?

Crystallization, or crystallisation, is the process of atoms or molecules arranging into a well-defined, rigid crystal lattice in order to minimize their energetic state. The smallest entity of a crystal lattice is called a unit cell, which can accept atoms or molecules to grow a macroscopic crystal.

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During crystallization, atoms and unit cells bind together with well-defined angles to form a characteristic crystal shape with smooth surfaces and facets.

Crystallization can occur in nature but also has broad industrial applications as a separation and purification step in the pharmaceutical, chemical, and food industries.

Industrial crystallization is the production of crystalline particulate material from a liquid solution. Because of the production of crystalline material the technique has a high purification potential. Proper control of the crystallization circumstances gives the opportunity to tune the particle size and to a limited extent the shape. These characteristics lead to the fact that crystallization is one of the most applied purification and formulation techniques in industry.

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Crystallization is applied to all kinds of industries like industrial chemicals (sodium chloride, terephthalic acid, ammonium sulphate, melamine, adipic acid), food chemicals (dextrose, lactose, benzoic acid, vitamins), pharmaceutical (anti-biotics, Paracetamol, Atorvastatin, Estradiol). Production takes place on small scales (e.g. 100 g in early stages of clinical trials of pharmaceutics) as well as very large scales (e.g. alumina, 10,000 m3 crystallizers).

Development of crystallization processes requires the assessment of the feasibility of formation of crystals (including polymorphs), determination of the thermodynamics and crystallization kinetics, all in view of the required product specifications. The thermodynamics of the solid and the origin of the product usually determine the nature of the crystallization process. The scale of the production determines the complexity of the process and equipment. Small scale, high value products (like pharmaceutics) are usually produced in multi-product environments with relative straight forward equipment (e.g. stirred vessels), but may require a complex operation schedule (multiple solvent switches, cooling/heating cycles,&#;). Large scale commodities usually are produced in dedicated complex equipment (multi-functionalities in equipment like mixing, evaporation, heat-integration) enabling the efficient production of the crystals.

Process modeling can be used to accelerate process development (small and large scale production) and to optimize processes. The key factor in the control of crystallization processes is control of the super-saturation. This is done by controlling the liquid composition, mixing, cooling and evaporation in the process. Super-saturation and solubility are important factors for determining the particle size of the product. High-super-saturation processes and low solubility usually lead to small particles (<100 μm). High solubility and low-super-saturation processes have the ability to form large crystals (>100 μm). The shape of crystals is generally an intrinsic property of the solid material and can be influenced to a limited extent. Changing needle shape crystals into cubic crystals is generally not possible, but reducing the aspect ratio (length/width) might be possible.

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