Membrane assisted crystallization of active pharmaceutical ingredients (APIs) by forward osmosis and its effect on crystal size and morphology

Abstract

At present and in the past decade, forward osmosis (FO) membrane technology has grown as an emerging technology in various area specially desalination, waste and drinkable water treatment, pharmaceutical, and food processing industry. FO depends on the osmotic pressure difference generated between feed solution (FS) and that of draw solution (DS) which results the separation of selective liquid components possible. FO is energy intensive process creating concentration gradient between FS and DS, which is driving force for separation and concentration of saturated solutions. Membrane assisted crystallization (MAC) process; a combination of membrane technology with conventional crystallization processes is useful hybrid crystallization process recently developing mostly in pharmaceutical and food processing sectors. In this work, comprehensive study has been done on the membrane assisted FO process which utilizes various operation conditions which are necessities for development of hybrid MAC for the active pharmaceutical ingredients (APIs). Recently developed membranes have intrinsic characteristics of operational simplicity, high permeability, selectivity and efficiency. These characteristics make possible to develop a technology which satisfies the concept of various APIs production. The main objective of this present study is to compare the effect of various process parameters such as drug solution supersaturation, crystallization temperature, and time on crystal size and morphology of APIs by conventional crystallization and MAC.