The separation of an enantiomer from a racemic mixture is of primary relevance to the pharmaceutical industry. The thermochemical properties of organic enantiopure and racemate crystals can be exploited to design an enantioselective crystallization process. The thermodynamic difference between the two crystal forms is accessible by two cycles which give the eutectic composition in solution. The "sublimation cycle" requires calculating the lattice energy and phonon frequencies of the crystal structures. Experimental results from heat capacity and other thermodynamic measurements of enantiopure and racemic crystals are compared with a variety of molecular and crystal structure-based calculations. This is done for three prototypes of pharmaceutical-like molecules with different degrees of molecular flexibility. Differences in crystal packing result in varying temperature-dependent heat capacities and affect the sublimation thermodynamics, relative solubility, and eutectic composition. Many simplifying assumptions about the thermodynamics and solubilities of the racemic and enantiopure crystals are critically evaluated. We show that calculations and experimental information using the sublimation cycle can guide the design of processes to resolve enantiomers by crystallization.

Accurate lattice energies of organic crystals are important i.e. for the pharmaceutical industry. Periodic DFT calculations with atom-centered Gaussian basis functions with the Turbomole program are used to calculate lattice energies for several non-covalently bound organic molecular crystals. The accuracy and convergence of results with basis set size and k-space sampling from periodic calculations is evaluated for the two reference molecules benzoic acid and naphthalene. For the X23 benchmark set of small molecular crystals accurate lattice energies are obtained using the PBE-D3 functional. In particular for hydrogen-bonded systems, a sufficiently large basis set is required. The calculated lattice energy differences between enantiopure and racemic crystal forms for a prototype set of chiral molecules are in good agreement with experimental results and allow the rationalization and computer-aided design of chiral separation processes. © 2018 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.

Crystallization is an inevitable step in the purification of artemisinin either from the plant Artemisia annua or from reaction mixtures of semisynthetically produced artemisinin. Rational design of crystallization process requires knowledge about the solid–liquid equilibrium in a given solvent system and effect of impurities on it. In the present work, a crystallization process was designed to purify artemisinin from fractions of a flash chromatography column effluent collected after injecting extracts of Artemisia annua leaves. The fractions from chromatography containing artemisinin were combined together into one fraction, and the impurities present in this fraction were identified. The solubility of artemisinin in the mobile phase used for chromatography, i.e., n-hexane–ethyl acetate mixture of varying compositions, was measured at 25, 15, and 5 °C, respectively. The collective effect of impurities present in the combined fraction on the solid–liquid equilibrium of artemisinin was evaluated by measuring the solubility of artemisinin in the combined fraction at same temperatures. The results show that the impurities present in the combined fraction increase the solubility of artemisinin. Finally, the crystallization of artemisinin from the combined fraction designed on the basis of artemisinin solubility data was carried out in two steps by adding an antisolvent and cooling crystallization. The yield of artemisinin obtained in the process was 50%, and it was found that the impurities present in the combined fraction at a given concentration do not affect the crystallization of artemisinin.

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