Monitoring industrial pharmaceutical crystallization processes using acoustic emission in pure and impure media

Acoustic emission (AE) which has been successfully applied for monitoring a rather wide variety of solids elaboration processes was almost never evaluated in the field of industrial pharmaceutical crystallization. Few papers reported that solution crystallization processes give rise to acoustic emission signals that could be related to the development of the basic crystallization phenomena. This study is intended to demonstrate new perspectives opened up by the possible use of acoustic emission (AE) as a non-intrusive and non destructive sensor for monitoring solution crystallization with a particular focus being put on the presence of impurities in real industrial processes. The wealth of acquired AE information is highlighted and it is suggested that such information could allow the design of innovative multipurpose sensing strategies. It is shown notably that AE provides a very early detection of nucleation events, much before the onset of the so-called "nucleation burst". It is also shown that AE brings new insight into the effect of impurities on both the development of the crystallization process and the quality of the crystallized product. (C) 2012 Elsevier B. V. All rights reserved.