Use Cases
Crystallization: Reduce process time by 75%!
Pharmaceutical production: optimizing processing time by monitoring crystal size and shape
- Processing time is critical for yield, product quality and energy consumption
Findings:
- Monitoring 5 batch operations revealed:
- Yield and crystal size reaches maximum after 1 hour
- After 1 hour, crystals start to break due to shear force from stirrer
Actions:
- Based on findings it was possible to reduce crystallization time by 76% which increased throughput and energy efficiency. Optimizing the parameters caused less variation among batches
Result:
- Energy reduction
- Time reduction
- Improvement of product quality
Detection of suboptimal production
Sugar production: monitoring crystallizations to detect and react to deviating process operation
- Deviating process operation and resulting product loss can in many cases be mitigated if suitable monitoring equipment is used
Findings:
- ParticleTech Solution showed that the crystal size distribution in one of the crystallization units deviated from the rest
Actions:
- The information made it possible to react to the deviating process, prevent loss of product and increase throughput
Result:
- Energy reduction
- Higher throughput (faster growth)
- Higher product quality (bigger crystals)
Reduction of product loss
Biomanufacturing: Finding optimal centrifuge parameters by measuring biomass/crystal ratio
- Biomass separation can be a significant source of product loss. ParticleTech Solution allows for an automated analysis of particles in feed, light phase and heavy phase streams
Findings:
- The biomass-crystal segmentation algorithm enables direct measurements of the biomass/crystals distribution
Actions:
- ParticleTech Solution made it possible to reduce loss of product in the decanter centrifuge by 36%!
Result:
- Reduction of loss
- Energy reduction
- Higher throughput
Reducing raw material consumption
Biomanufacturing: finding the optimal dosage of polymer for flocculation processes
- Dosage of flocculants to processes is critical for ensuring a good clarification. ParticleTech Solution can be used to analyse before and after a flocculation to find the optimal polymer dosage
Findings
- Flocculation effeciency was quantified by measuring the quantity of particles smaller than 10µm after flocculation
Actions
- The Solution enabled a direct optimization of the ploymer dosage vs. flocculation efficiency
Results
- Optimal polymer dosage
- Reduction of loss
- Increased flocculation efficiency
Optimizing product properties
Pharmaceutical production: Optimizing the dissolution rate of pharmaceutical tablets
- Dissolution rate of tablets is paramount for the bioavailability and therapeutic effectiveness of pharmaceutical products. Particle size and shape distribution provide essential information to the standardized USP dissolution experiments
Findings
- Automatic sampling from standard USP dissolution vessels provide data on dissolution rates of particles in suspension etc.
Actions
- Dissolution rates can subsequently be used to find the optimal product formulation
Results
- Optimal polymer dosage
- Reduction of loss
- Increased flocculation efficiency
Optimizing fermentation operation
Biomanufacturing: Continuous monitoring of fermentation process
- Biomass concentration is one of the most critical measurements for characterization and control of fermentation processes. ParticleTech solutions allows for direct measurement of the biomass concentration over time, which can be used for optimizing the feeding rate etc. For yeast fermentations, it is furthermore possible to obtain the distribution of number of budding cells. The analysis solution can be applied even if other insoluble particulate matters are present in the fermentation broth
