ISBN 978-3-8439-5507-2

978-3-8439-5507-2, Reihe Apparatedesign

Stefan Höving
Design and Characterization of Integrated Processes in a Modular Particle Production Plant

268 Seiten, Dissertation Technische Universität Dortmund (2024), Softcover, A5

Zusammenfassung / Abstract

In the pharmaceutical, biotech and fine chemical industries, continuous processes have gained importance in recent decades. Many production processes have shifted from conventional batch production to continuous production of products to cover demands with high quality and fast service of the market. Especially in today's world, challenges like global warming and pollution exist, the advantages of small-scale continuous processing (high efficiency, good scalability, good process control, etc.) are an important driving force for energy-saving and resource-saving processes with a smaller footprint.

Cooling crystallization from solution is one of the most important unit operations in the above-mentioned production methods. For small-scale systems, however, the integration of continuous cooling crystallization falls short of its potential. This is mainly due to the challenges associated with the handling of suspensions and solids during and after crystallization.

As part of this work, the unit operations were integrated into a single modular and flexible plant. Individual batches of target substance suspension can be subjected to one of the four unit operations in a parallelized manner. Depending on requirements, the entire process can operated from the seeded suspension passing the unit operations cooling crystallization, solid-liquid separation, filter cake washing, and drying to obtain a dry product filter cake. Intensive integration, automation and concepts such as a clean-in-place strategy enabled long-term experiments of up to 14 h for the model substance system sucrose/water. With only minimal manual interventions no termination criterion was met and a production rate of 22.64 g·h−1 ± 1.64 g·h−1 was achieved.

The system developed as well as the automation and control concepts and their evaluation demonstrate the feasibility and future potential of the new production approach.