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Insight into nucleation kinetics and other nucleation parameters can be obtained from probability distributions of induction time measurements in combination with the classical nucleation theory. In this work, induction times of crystallization were recorded using a robust and automated methodology involving a focused beam reflectance measurement probe. This methodology is easily interchangeable between different crystallizers which allowed us to investigate the effects of scale-up on the kinetics of crystal nucleation of paracetamol from 2-propanol in four different crystallizers, ranging from small magnetically stirred 10 mL solutions to overhead-stirred solutions of 680 mL. The nucleation rate was an order of magnitude faster in the magnetically stirred crystallizer as compared to the crystallizers involving overhead stirring. The thermodynamic part of the nucleation rate expression did not significantly change the nucleation rate, whereas the kinetic nucleation parameter was found to be the rate-determining process when the crystallization process was scaled-up. In particular, the shear rate was rationalized to be the part of the kinetic parameter that changes most significantly when the crystallization process was scaled-up. The effect of shear rate on the nucleation kinetics decreases with increasing volume and plateaus when the volume becomes too large. In this work, the nucleation mechanism was also investigated using the chiral sodium chlorate system. These experiments showed that the single nucleus mechanism is the underlying nucleation mechanism in all four tested crystallization setups when supersaturation remains the same. When the supersaturation was changed continuously through cooling, crystallization was driven by a multinucleus mechanism. The automated and robust method used to measure induction times can easily be extended to other crystallizers, enabling the measurement of induction times beyond small crystallizer volumes.

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This paper describes a new nonintrusive method for the determination of high-temperature solubility data. Accurate high-temperature solubility data is vital to many industrial manufacturing processes such as cooling crystallization with direct implications for yield, throughput, and solvent usage. However, the provision of such data is notably absent from published literature for many active pharmaceutical ingredients. Pressurized-synthetic methodology is presented as a new technique for determining high-temperature solubility data. Paracetamol (acetaminophen) is used as a reference active pharmaceutical ingredient to validate the methodology. Solubility data determined using the pressurized-synthetic approach is reported for several pure solvents across a significantly extended temperature range. In the case of methanol, solubility data is obtained up to 354.15 K, above the atmospheric boiling point of the solvent, 337.65 K, and far in excess of the temperature range for which data exists in the literature, 268.15–303.15 K. The data obtained using the pressurized-synthetic method is validated against an extended gravimetric data set at temperatures up to the atmospheric boiling point for each solvent. Sensitivity studies were conducted to determine the influence of factors such as temperature gradient on the ultimate solubility determination. A temperature-based standard deviation of 0.1 K was established for paracetamol in 2-propanol at 303.15 K, comparing favorably with the temperature-based equivalent standard deviation of 0.2 K for the gravimetric approach. Binary interaction parameters for the pressurized-synthetic solubility data are derived and estimated for four different activity coefficient models, namely Margules, Van-Laar, Wilson, and non-random two-liquid (NRTL), along with the empirical solubility equation of Apelblat. For each solvent, the quality of fit of each of the activity coefficient models is analyzed. The NRTL model was found to best fit the experimental data for methanol, ethanol, 2-propanol, and acetone with mean square errors of 5.73 × 10–5, 3.00 × 10–4, 1.70 × 10–4, and 7.35 × 10–5, respectively. The pressurized-synthetic approach provides a nonintrusive, validated, and readily automated approach for the provision of valuable high-temperature solubility data that can be readily extended to binary and ternary systems.