Solvents and Solvent Selection in Chemical Manufacturing

This is a online short course which will look at reducing the burden of solvents,  importance of solvent selection, and how to reduce solvent use and select solvents with a better safety and environmental profile.

May 13, 1.30 – 4.30 pm (UK) |  Session 1
May 14, 1.30 – 4.30 pm (UK) |  Session 2
May 15, 1.30 – 4.30 pm (UK) | Session 3

Looking at the process mass intensity (kg API/ kg materials used), solvents and process water are the biggest contributor to Process Mass Intensity (PMI). Due to their embedded resource utilisation, solvents are also of the biggest contributors to the cradle to gate life cycle impact of pharmaceutical agrochemical and fine chemical products. The advance of  EU REACH (and similar environmental legislation in other territories) is also highlighting the undesirable human health and environmental issues with some solvents and solvent classes thus making the intelligent selection of solvents a paramount task for process chemists and engineers seeking to design the most sustainable manufacturing route, and to  avoid future issues with chemicals that legislation seeks to reduce or remove entirely from use.

It is clear that solvents still challenge the industry and there is work to be done in identifying better, more sustainable solvents – especially to replace some ethers, dichloromethane and many of the dipolar aprotics, and adopt ways of working that reduce/optimise solvent use. This virtual course will explore some tools and current strategies for doing this.  The following topics will be covered:

• Issues with solvents
• Trends in solvent use in the pharmaceutical industry
• Environmental legislation – Substances of very high concern (SVAC) list
• Resources for solvent selection – available guides and interpretation
• Uptake of new/ emerging solvents & solvent substitutions
• Solvent recovery/minimisation of solvent use
• New molecular solvents
• Ionic liquids
• Deep eutectic mixtures
• Supercritical fluids/switchable solvents
• Chemistry in water
• Mechanochemistry

In addition to the presentation material, attendees will also get  a list of DOI -linked literature references on solvent selection, recommended solvent/alternative solvents for a range of reaction classes, and key a selection of publications on emerging solvents. The application, uptake and pros and cons of each class will be discussed.