Abstract The development of pharmaceutical production processes is frequently hindered by challenging filtration operations. The particle size and shape distribution is known to be a major contributor to filtration performance: here a strategy to understand how this distribution controls the filter cake structure is proposed. We employ Monte Carlo sampling to generate packings/filter cakes of needle-like crystals, a common morphology in the pharmaceutical industry. The cake porosity, particle orientation and size segregation are characterized. The simulations demonstrate the remarkable impact of polydispersity on cake structure and they confirm the influence of particle aspect ratio. Porosity ranges from 40 to 85% in the investigated domain. Porosity increases with increasing polydispersity of the particle length, while polydispersity along the diameter causes the opposite effect. Even though these simulations only account for particle shape and size and neglect flow and particle interactions, they successfully predict the porosity trends of experimental systems of l -Glutamic Acid.

中文翻译：

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预测针状晶体的过滤：球体多分散填料的蒙特卡罗模拟研究

摘要 具有挑战性的过滤操作经常阻碍药物生产工艺的发展。已知粒度和形状分布是影响过滤性能的主要因素：这里提出了一种了解这种分布如何控制滤饼结构的策略。我们采用蒙特卡罗采样来生成针状晶体的填料/滤饼，这是制药行业的常见形态。对滤饼孔隙率、颗粒取向和尺寸偏析进行表征。模拟证明了多分散性对滤饼结构的显着影响，并证实了颗粒纵横比的影响。所研究区域的孔隙率范围为 40% 至 85%。孔隙率随着颗粒长度多分散性的增加而增加，而沿直径的多分散性会产生相反的效果。尽管这些模拟仅考虑了颗粒形状和尺寸而忽略了流动和颗粒相互作用，但它们成功地预测了 l-谷氨酸实验系统的孔隙率趋势。