The two-day international symposium, organised by the RSC, which is the United Kingdom’s learned body and professional society for the general advancement of chemical science, provided a programme of internationally acclaimed speakers, drawn primarily from industries and organisations making pioneering advances in the science, understanding and development of new approaches to processing and synthesis. ETERNAL was represented by the project’s research coordinator Dr. Paz Sebastiá Luna from AIMPLAS and Robert Peeling from Britest Limited, who leads activity within ETERNAL’s industry co-creation (scale-up and piloting) work package.
The Symposium’s focus was upon how disruptive process technologies coupled with alternative sources of chemicals and materials are being explored to improve processes by replacing hard-target materials or traditional production processes, or both. In particular, extracting value from waste (especially materials that pollute the environment) and recycling/reusing/repurposing activities with benefits ranging from cheaper sourcing of key precursor compounds to completely new processing technologies have drawn attention in recent years. In other areas the study of natural resource utilisation to access novel chemistry offers an attractive alternative to current practices. Against this backdrop, the speakers from ETERNAL were able to provide a useful perspective and crossover of insight from innovation for sustainability in the pharma manufacturing space as part of whole lifecycle improvements in the design, manufacture, use, and disposal of pharmaceuticals.
Paz Sebastiá provided an overview of ETERNAL and described how continuous processing is being employed within one of its industrial case studies with Aneglini Pharma as an enabler of more efficient, less impactful processing and as a means of producing otherwise unobtainable dosage forms in downstream processing. As can be seen from the following graphic, continuous methods such as hot melt extrusion and twin screw granulation greatly simplify the sequence of unit operations associated with traditional solid dosage form manufacture and thus have the potential to deliver environmental, operational and economic benefits.
Continuous methods greatly simplify the sequence of unit operations associated with solid dosage form manufacture and have the potential to deliver environmental, operational and economic benefits.
Rob Peeling introduced the importance of system-level thinking and ways to visualize complex manufacturing and supply value chains for action-oriented understanding towards resource efficiency and sustainability. His presentation shared a number of examples and lessons learnt during ETERNAL and through other recent collaborations dealing with scalable production of platform chemicals from paper industry waste streams; advanced recycling process and value chains for polymer composites and multi-layers; and full life cycle approaches covering design, manufacture, use, and disposal of pharmaceuticals. Rob’s themes included assessing transformation of waste streams into useful resources; identifying synergies enhancing process economics and reducing environmental impacts through circular material resource and energy flows; sound, holistic decision-making for sustainability early in the innovation lifecycle; and the overall whole system-based pathway to commercialization being applied to ETERNAL’s industrial case studies.
Chemspec is widely recognised as a premier platform for product sourcing and industry networking, serving as a key meeting point for buyers, traders, and agents seeking bespoke solutions and innovative substances. The annual event also provides critical updates on industry trends and regulations through its extensive conference programme of which the RSC symposium series has become a well-established and integral part.
ETERNAL’s participation in the RSC Chemspec Symposium was just one part of the project’s programme of communication and dissemination activity aimed at broadening the impact of the project’s innovations towards reduction of the environmental impact of pharmaceutical products throughout their entire life cycle. If you’d like to more you’d be very welcome to contact Paz or Rob, and if you’d like to keep up to date with all our developments and engagement events in the second half of the project, be sure to sign up to our newsletters - the link is just below!
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