Solvents and Solvent Selection in Chemical Manufacturing

This webinar is presented by Dr Andy Wells, Charnwood Technical Consulting in conjunction with Scientific Update.

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 webinar will explore some tools and current strategies for doing this.

The following topics will be covered:

• Trends in solvent use in the pharmaceutical industry
• EU legislation – Substances of very high concern (SVAC) list
• Uptake of new/ emerging solvents
• Resources for solvent selection – available guides and interpretation
• Solvent recovery/minimisation of solvent use