Modelling protein crystallisation using morphological population balance models

Protein crystallisation is known to be affected by many factors and inherently difficult to control. Being able to model the crystal growth behaviour, especially at process scale for the population of particles in a crystalliser will no doubt greatly help the formulation and controlled manufacture of protein crystals. In this paper, a morphological population balance model for crystallisation of tetragonal Hen-Egg-White (HEW) lysozyme is presented. Since the population balance model has incorporated crystal shape information, it is able to simulate the dynamic evolution of the shape distribution as well as size distribution. The morphological population balance model requires faceted growth kinetics data, which was obtained from published data in literature for the two identified independent crystallographic faces, {101} and {110}, of HEW lysozyme crystals. (C) 2009 The Institution of Chemical Engineers. Published by Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.