The Application of Flow Chemistry to Advanced Pharmaceutical Manufacturing

Improving working practices by adopting the latest technologies and best approaches into a commercial organisation benefits the company by providing it with a series of competitive edges. In the areas of pharmaceutical, agrochemical and neuroceuticals synthesis, Flow Chemistry based process manufacturing is a new approach that boosts both efficiency and productivity. Instead of working in large bulky reactors, flow reactors can be engineered as miniaturised high performance units that enable a continuous feed of chemicals to be converted in real-time producing a constant product output stream. Indeed, several reactors can be integrated together to allow multi-step transformations to prepare complex products. This approach also allows rapid scaling of the output by simply leaving the reactor running longer and can facilitate just in time manufacture through rapid start-up and shut down. Conceptually this transition from old Batch based chemical synthesis to modern Flow Chemistry (a form of continuous manufacturing) can be likened to the evolution in making coffee. Historically, coffee was prepared using a stove heated percolator (Classical batch based chemical synthesis) however, modern expresso coffee machines can now, at the press of a few buttons, make coffee on-demand, even extending the process adding flavours, milk and sweeteners (Flow based synthesis). From a pharmaceutical synthesis perspective adopting Flow Chemistry also provides gains with regards saving on space, energy and much improved worker safety. Another aspect which offers considerable value is the small dimension reactors which facilitate easy application of higher pressures and temperatures which can be used to drastically accelerate the reaction to completion allowing much greater throughput of material, higher yields and improved purity of the product. This then can shorten the production sequence by reducing purification work streams. Currently much of the practical knowledge of Flow Chemistry techniques and its associated technologies are resident in Universities. In this proposal we intend to take this experience directly into a corporate environment where it will be applied to design and streamline a series of selected chemical manufacturing processes. This will enable the company to test and embed the technology into its commercial offerings. The experiences and data generated can also be used to spring board this technology to other organisations through the generation of 'best practices'.