(334ay) Jet-Mixing Reactor for Nanomaterial Synthesis and Scale-up Considerations

Advances in pharmaceutical discovery and increasing global healthcare demands call for innovative technologies that can produce material at high throughput while retaining quality obtained at the bench scale. Nanomaterials are being increasingly used in pharmaceutical production. The properties of nanomaterials are highly dependent on the mixing dynamics of their synthesis process. Macromixing in conventional batch syntheses increases the overall mixing time, leading to variability within batches and a wide particle size distribution. These problems can be circumvented by using microreactors that provide a small mixing time because of their associated micromixing and mesomixing. This work proposes a continuous, scalable jet-mixing reactor that is used for the synthesis of several metal and metal-oxide nanomaterials. Initially, silver nanoparticles (Ag NPs) are synthesized at ambient conditions as proof-of-concept. It is observed that Ag NPs synthesized using jet-mixing have a particle size distribution narrower by 4.5% and a 20% increase in shelf life as compared to their batch-synthesized counterpart. The jet-mixing reactor also demonstrates material economy by requiring a capping agent concentration that is four times lower than that required in batch. Next, the jet-mixing process is developed to incorporate inert conditions to synthesize pure-phase copper nanomaterials (Cu NPs) that tend to oxidize readily under ambient conditions. Cu NPs with 88% phase purity are synthesized using jet-mixing. Lastly, the jet-mixing reactor is used for the inert synthesis of multi-component core@shell Pd@TiO₂ nanomaterials. The materials obtained from batch and jet-mixing synthesis are tested as catalysts for the hydrodeoxygenation (HDO) of furfuryl alcohol. It is observed that the selectivity for the HDO product, 2-methyl furan, obtained using the jet-mixing-synthesized material is comparable to that obtained by batch synthesis. Jet-mixing is capable of a productivity of 50 g/cc min of the catalyst as compared to batch that yields 0.5 g per run, demonstrating the scalability of the synthesis. Overall, these studies demonstrate that jet-mixing is a scalable, flexible tool for the synthesis of several types of nanomaterials and is readily extendable to a variety of synthesis conditions. Currently, studies are underway to characterize the mixing dynamics of the reactor to enable process scale-up.

Research Interests: Pharmaceutical scale-up, batch-to-continuous processing, process development, product development, nanomaterial synthesis