Sustainable Drug Synthesis

High selectivities and yields play a particularly important role in the individual synthesis steps of the mostly multi-stage synthesis of active pharmaceutical ingredients. Furthermore, the implementation of „Green Chemistry” and “Green Engineering” is of central importance for the global pharmaceutical companies in order to reach economic and environmental sustainability in the pharmaceutical industry. The twelve observed "Green Chemistry" principles include amongst others waste prevention, the efficient use of raw materials and the minimization of energy use as well as the implementation of a real-time process monitoring. The traditional and established manufacturing processes of pharmaceuticals are mainly based on batch processing. The quality control takes place via laboratory tests drawn from process samples. Innovations in the development of pharmaceuticals are expected from the product and process development, process analysis and process control.

„We will help you to exploit the full potential of your chemical processes”

Our approach to the necessary innovations is based on the following methods and technologies:

• Transfer of batch processes into continuous processing,
• use of microreactors and flow chemistry in synthesis,
• integration of inline sensors as a basis for effective process control.

Thanks to our flow reactors we can achieve higher product selectivities and yields in many organic chemical reactions. This can largely be attributed to the precise control of the reaction by effective mass and heat transfer:

• Synthesis routes are simplified since reactive intermediates can be produced in-situ and can directly be processed,
• catalysts which are immobilized in flow reactors reduce downstream processing efforts,
• photochemical reactions are being processed under milder reaction conditions and do not require toxic reagents, the residues of which have to be separated at a later stage,
• interaction between NMR-benchtop devices, a continuous synthesis plant and a flow cell lay the ground for future online-measurement.

On this base we build our development activities for customer-specific processes.

Whether you want to improve your existing process or you want to explore new routes with us, we will find a way together.