Solid dissolution in a fluid solvent is characterized by the interplay of surface area-dependent diffusion and physical fragmentation

Abstract

The processes of dissolution and fragmentation have high relevance in pharmaceutical research, medicine, digestive physiology, and engineering design. Experimentally, dissolution and fragmentation are observed to occur simultaneously, yet little is known about the relative importance of each of these processes and their impact on the dissolution process as a whole. Thus, in order to better explain these phenomena and the manner in which they interact, we have developed a novel mathematical model of dissolution, based on partial differential equations, taking into consideration the two constituent processes of surface area-dependent diffusive mass removal and physical fragmentation of the solid particles, and the basic physical laws governing these processes. With this model, we have been able to quantify the effects of the interplay between these two processes and determine the optimal conditions for rapid solid dissolution in liquid solvents. We were able to reproduce experimentally observed phenomena and simulate dissolution under a wide range of experimentally occurring conditions to give new perspectives into the kinetics of this common, yet complex process. Finally, we demonstrated the utility of this model to aid in experiment and device design as an optimisation tool.

Dissolution kinetics of zinc oxide and its relationship with physicochemical characteristics

“…Dissolution should not break aggregates for the dissolution kinetics remains controlled by diffusion in the quiescent liquid inside aggregates during the whole dissolution process. Fragmentation/peptization occurring at the end of dissolution does accelerate kinetics in many instances[44,45,46], which does not look being the present case.…”

Controlled NO-Release from 3D-Printed Small-Diameter Vascular Grafts Prevents Platelet Activation and Bacterial Infectivity

“…It can be expected that during the coating process, THF can diffuse into and dissolve a thin superficial layer of the lower layer and therefore the layers will be stably fused into one another. 50 Furthermore, the results indicate that PEG and PCL, as very hydrophilic and hydrophobic polymers, respectively, show different NO-release. In detail, released NO-levels from the PEG-SNAP matrix are maximal in the early minutes, whereas NO-release from PCL-SNAP is higher from 48 h onward.…”

Integrating Elastic Tensor and PC-SAFT Modeling with Systems-Based Pharma 4.0 Simulation, to Predict Process Operations and Product Specifications of Ternary Nanocrystalline Suspensions

“…where n is the parameter of dispersion determined by the steepness of distribution x from Equation (12):…”

“…Elaborating, nanocrystals possess a high dissolution rate, and low-soluble nanoparticles cannot actually separate; consequently, the equilibrium of dissolution cannot be defined or validated and therefore the results obtained are poorly reproducible [11]. To counterbalance for the aforementioned ambiguity, the Noyes-Whitney and the Nernst-Brunner equations are frequently used for qualitative predictions of the saturation solubility increase tendency, bourn by the particle size comminution [12]. However, these conventional methods are also not suitable to accurately quantify the dissolution enhancement due to the nanoparticle formation, because neither the complex stabilizer contribution nor the adsorption influence on the interfacial tension occurring between the water and APIs is considered [12].…”