Phase Transformation of Sulfamerazine Using a Taylor Vortex

Abstract

A Couette–Taylor (CT) crystallizer was used to demonstrate the unique fluid dynamic properties of a Taylor vortex for the phase transformation of sulfamerazine (SMZ). With a conventional Rushton mixing tank (MT) crystallizer, the phase transformation from a metastable crystalline phase to the stable crystalline phase took more than 60 h with acetonitrile (ACN) as the solvent and an agitation rate of 3000 rpm. Using a CT crystallizer, this phase transformation occurred within 3–7 h with rotation speeds in the CT crystallizer of 300–1000 rpm. Increasing the rotation speed of the CT crystallizer also significantly enhanced the phase transformation, whereas adding water to the solvent increased the solubility difference between the two polymorphs and accelerated the phase transformation in both crystallizers. The phase transformation in the CT crystallizer was always many times faster than that in the MT crystallizer. Nucleation and mass-transfer models were used to describe the nucleation induction time of t...