PhD Studentship: Spherical Agglomeration for Process Intensification in Pharmaceutical Manufacture

Manufacture of pharmaceutical dosage form, such as a tablet, involves many steps. The active pharmaceutical ingredient (API) must be synthesized purified and formed into particles (upstream processing). Then the API is formulated with excipients, granulated and formed into tablets. Traditional pharmaceutical manufacture is batch, but the industry is undergoing a major transformation to continuous manufacture. This introduces the opportunity for novel processes to integrate upstream and downstream steps, reducing the number of unit operations required in manufacture. One example is liquid phase spherical agglomeration, where agglomeration after crystallization of the API is initiated by the addition of an antisolvent, removing the need for downstream drying, milling and granulation. Inherently, reducing the number of unit operations also reduces the degrees of freedom and therefore available design space. Therefore, mechanistically based models for design and scale up are even more critical for these novel processes than for more traditional unit operations. Such models do not exist for spherical agglomeration.

In this project, the student will develop new multiscale modeling approaches for spherical agglomeration. Essential to this approach is the correct understanding of the key controlling mechanisms and incorporating the most important physics correctly in the models. Model development and validation will be supported by careful experimental studies in our lab at Sheffield, and through collaboration with the Continuous Manufacturing and Crystallisation Centre (CMAC) at Strathclyde University.

Funding Notes

Please contact Prof Litster to discuss funding on this project