Energy optimization during early drug development and the relationship with environmental burdens

Process development in the pharmaceutical industry is oriented to several k ey objectives, like yield or purity; and energy usage is normally given onl y a secondary consideration. On the other hand, there is a growing interest to give a greater weight to environmental factors as an integral part of t he decision-making process at the Research and Development (R&D) stages of design for drug manufacturing. Therefore, there is a need to assess the ene rgy usage throughout the development stage, to be able to quantify the chan ges in the development phases and evaluate the total environmental benefits due to energy optimization. In the present work, energy life cycle informa tion is developed to provide environmental input into process selection and development within the pharmaceutical industry. The evaluation and compari son of energy requirements and energy-related emissions at various stages o f the development process for a pharmaceutical product was conducted. It wa s found that the main optimization in energy usage for this specific system takes place during the pilot scale stage in the process developments (abou t 70% energy reduction). The reductions in energy usage are translated in e ven higher reduction of total energy-related emissions (for the full-scale processes, around 80%). It could be clearly seen that energy optimization i n the early stages of process design translates into a lower level of emiss ions related to the use of energy. (C) 2000 Society of Chemical Industry.