Computer-Aided Design of Sustainable Separations: CADSep

The collaboration Dynamic Extractions, Novartis UK and Imperial College supported by the TSB will overcome the last major barrier to the widespread adoption of High Performance Countercurrent Chromatography (HPCCC). This barrier is the time consuming process of developing the correct combination of solvents to separate any given chemical mixture to obtain only the desired chemical. The collaborators will create a fast and effective standard approach to select the best mixture of solvents from a standard set of solvent combinations to target the desired chemical. This will benefit the UK's pharmaceutical companies by allowing more chemicals to be purified leading to the availability of more and better drugs that will improve public health. Also as HPCCC is easily scalable (does not use expensive solid stationary phases and thus uses significantly less quantities of solvents than existing processes) the development of these new drugs will be less expensive and greener.