Fluid Dynamic and Heat Transfer Simulations of Solid Hollow Fiber Cooling Crystallizer for Continuous Synthesis of Drug Nanoparticles

Document Type

Article

Publication Date

6-3-2020

Abstract

The study illustrates for the first time a computational fluid dynamics (CFD)-based heat transfer model for the novel solid hollow fiber cooling crystallizer (SHFCC) that can produce drug nanoparticles in a continuous and controllable manner. In the SHFCC device, a mixture of water and ethylene glycol is circulated through the shell side of a solid hollow fiber module to rapidly cool the drug solution flowing in the hollow fiber lumen side to produce rapid temperature reduction-induced drug crystals. In this study, a three-dimensional model of an SHFCC device was first constructed using the software GAMBIT and then was exported to the CFD software-FLUENT after the meshing and optimization process, to understand and optimize hydrodynamic and heat transfer characteristics of this device theoretically. The variation of lumen-side flow rate was investigated using CFD to explore the influences of residence time, flow rate, and cooling temperature on the crystal size distribution. Variations of the shell-side temperature and flow rate were also simulated to reveal the heat transfer efficiency of the SHFCC module and understand the phenomenon of temperature reduction-induced precipitation and crystal formation. Actual experimental results were also obtained to investigate the accuracy and usefulness of the CFD model. This research suggested the feasibility and advantages of a combination of CFD simulation with experiments to optimize and control drug crystallization process in the novel SHFCC device to meet the needs of modern pharmaceutical industry.

Identifier

85084588879 (Scopus)

Publication Title

Crystal Growth and Design

External Full Text Location

https://doi.org/10.1021/acs.cgd.0c00307

e-ISSN

15287505

ISSN

15287483

First Page

4020

Last Page

4029

Issue

6

Volume

20

Grant

21706221

Fund Ref

National Natural Science Foundation of China

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