Environmental issues in process design Authors Montserrat Sala Medichem, S. A. Keywords: Environmental aspects, design, green chemistry, sustainability Abstract Medichem is a pharmaceutical company located in Spain, Malta and China. In Celrà (Girona Prov.), Medichem has one of the manufacturing plants which is engaged in manufacturing active pharmaceutical ingredients (API). The manufacture of API requires an R&D department whose function is the development of an API synthetic process. In order to make the synthetic process sustainable, it is necessary to take into account the principles of green chemistry and at the same time to evaluate all the steps from the point of view of pollution prevention. It is always better to prevent waste generation by applying reduction techniques than to apply end-of-pipe treatments. In connection with more specific aspects of the synthesis of an API, the type of reagent and solvent used and their quantities should also be considered. Laboratory-scale synthesis uses quantities 10,000 times smaller than the quantities used on an industrial scale, so the amount of raw material used in a manufacturing process is an important factor to consider. A good synthetic process will be one that has the maximum yield, the highest quality and the minimum amount of raw material consumption. The requirements derived from environmental legislation should also be evaluated during the synthetic process. In order to carry out a process on an industrial scale, it is necessary to comply with all the environmental regulations which are in force for our activity. This is why the R&D department must have a knowledge of the legal requirements necessary to develop a process in accordance with current legislation.Keywords: Environmental aspects, design, green chemistry, sustainability. Downloads Download data is not yet available. Author Biography Montserrat Sala, Medichem, S. A. Downloads PDF (Català) Issue No. 16 (2017) Section Articles License The intellectual property of articles belongs to the respective authors. On submitting articles for publication to the journal Revista de la Societat Catalana de Química, authors accept the following terms:Authors assign to Catalan Society of Chemistry (a subsidiary of Institut d’Estudis Catalans) the rights of reproduction, communication to the public and distribution of the articles submitted for publication to Revista de la Societat Catalana de Química.Authors answer to Catalan Society of Chemistry for the authorship and originality of submitted articles.Authors are responsible for obtaining permission for the reproduction of all graphic material included in articles.Catalan Society of Chemistry declines all liability for the possible infringement of intellectual property rights by authors.The contents published in the journal, unless otherwise stated in the text or in the graphic material, are subject to a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs (by-nc-nd) 3.0 Spain licence, the complete text of which may be found at http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/es/deed.en. Consequently, the general public is authorised to reproduce, distribute and communicate the work, provided that its authorship and the body publishing it are acknowledged, and that no commercial use and no derivative works are made of it.The journal is not responsible for the ideas and opinions expressed by the authors of the published articles.
