By Prof. Mo Jiang, Virginia Commonwealth University

The pharmaceutical and chemical industries need scalable production of crystals with high quality in increasing atrributes, not only in terms of pure chemical composition and solid form (e.g., polymorphs), but also controlled morphology and size distribution. For example, many high-purity crystals directly produced today can exhibit needle-like shapes (aspect ratio >10) and wide size distribution (coefficient of variation >0.4), which can slow filtration by 10+ folds, require optimized milling and granulation, and reduce process reproducibility. This talk explores whether continuous crystallization—originally developed for scalability and flexibility—can offer an opportunity to address undesired crystal traits like needle morphology and broad size distribution, while preserving key quality attributes such as polymorph purity. A flow platform spanning research to kilo-scale production is presented, incorporating cooling, anti-solvent, and reaction crystallization methods. Experimental results show suppression of secondary nucleation, attrition, and clogging—common issues that hinder crystal control. Process intensification strategies for multi-attribute control in continuous flow are also discussed.