Flow Chemistry from Industrial R&D to Industrial Applications
Stéphane Laurent ,
Head of Department, Innovative Technologies,
Servier
Flow chemistry is of great interest in the manufacturing of Active Principle Ingredient as it allows the chemist to follow the best synthetic route to reach its target. There is few limitations for the type of chemistry that can be handle in flow chemistry and this is a fantastic tool to develop a safe, cost effective and very productive process. The challenge is to compete with batch process as this technology is widely represented in most chemical plants and very versatile. It’s easy to justify to go from batch to continuous manufacturing for safety issues but it’s more difficult for economic reasons, as the existing process has been developed for years and the investment is already done. Our strategy is to evaluate in our R&D pipe, the opportunities for continuous manufacturing to identify the best process when the product will go on the market. Several examples are described in this presentation in the industrial R&D field to produce gm to kg quantities of intermediates. The scope is broad because continuous manufacturing applies to reaction, extraction, distillation, crystallization, filtration etc… and a question arises quickly, how far should we go in continuous manufacturing ?
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