Grant: Discovery Grants Program - Individual

The Proposed research program deals with the application of crystal engineering in four closely-related areas.  Fundamental and applied research will be pursued in each area with the specific outcome of an innovative process, a product, or both in each case.  The first area deals with the crystallization and polymorphic studies of active pharmaceutical ingredients (APIs).  Model compounds such as stavudine and buspirone hydrochloride will be used.  The effect of solvents, impurities, operating temperature, and supersaturation will be studied on the product purity, solid state chemistry and polymorphic outcome, size distribution and crystal habit.  The results can save the industry millions of dollars by conducting a thorough polymorphic screening and control.  The predicted solubility of selected APIs in organic solvents, using thermodynamic relationship based on the activity coefficient, will be compared with the corresponding measured values.  This will enable a better choice of solvent and help move towards green chemistry.  The second area deals with the synthesis, characterization, and testing (for gasoline desulfurization and fluid catalytic cracking) of nanosized zeolite crystals.  A new dry process using a novel fluidized bed reactor will be utilized for the continuous production of mesoprous zeolites and reduction of the synthesis time.  The outcome of this research could revolutionize the production of zeolites and reduce the sulfur content of gasoline.  The third area will focus on the real time optimal control of batch crystallizers including modeling, solution of the population balance equation, parameter estimation, and instrumentation.  Real-time optimal control of batch processes, and in particular crystallizers, would increase the efficiency and overall productivity in the specialty chemical and pharmaceutical industries.   The fourth area aims at the design of selected new products with improved quality.  Synthesis and purification of pure hydroxyapatite as a hard biomaterial, nonlinear single crystals of potassium dihydrogen phosphate (KDP) for optical and electronic devices, and a series of arylamine molecules for xerographic and pharmaceutical applications will be pursued.