Scale-up
"Scaling-up" refers to increasing the scale of a product, device, process or technology that operate at a smaller scale. Much time has been spent, large scale production plant has been established based on laboratory data, however, it turns out that the kinetics are different, the product purity is way off, and reaction times are also unacceptable. In the worst case, the runaway reactions and explosions might arise. When the scale becomes large, the process is different, and these problems are usually too complex. There are so much detailed data that should be evaluated in processes of scaling up to production scale.
BOC Sciences has an extensive experience in process development and many years of hands-on experience of large scale manufacturing. We has infrastructure to perform scale-up rapidly, and our chemists and engineers know fully what it takes to develop a milligram procedure to kilogram process. We can scale up of existing routes according to your requirement and schedule.
Below is a list of our concern for Scale-up:
Reaction condition
To avoid scale-up problems, it is important to choose the correct reaction condition. Understanding the kinetics of the process is helpful for the design of the process, and making the correct choice of temperature along with the optimal dosing rate. Optimizing the reaction condition is part of a strategy to bring new chemical entities to market or extend existing product life cycles.
Commercial raw materials and catalyst
The raw materials and catalyst are high purity in a lab scale study due to very small usage. However, considering the cost of such high purity materials would be uneconomical, commercial grade material will usually be used in production plant. The difference in the purity of materials has an effect on the reaction kinetics.
Vessel applicability
Chemists mostly use glass vessel in the laboratory to avoid metal contamination, however, people seem to prefer to use stainless steel or alloy vessel in production plant. There is often a problem that many reaction mixtures are incompatible with certain metals, even though the individual components may all be compatible in use tests. Therefore, it is essential to test the reaction mixtures as well as the individual components for compatibility with the materials of construction of the vessel.
Solvent extraction
Whether the aqueous phase is added to the organic phase, or vice versa, often is not studied during extractive work-ups in the laboratory, since it usually makes no difference to the outcome of the experiment. However, in production plant, this would make a big difference, maybe leading to amount of by-products, which can affect yield and product quality.
If you have a process scale-up requirement, BOC Sciences helps you to develop a feasible process for a production scale plant. We can help you to facilitate your lab scale research to a full scale production plant faster and with less risk. For more information regarding process scale-up services, please feel free to contact us.
Reference
- Chisholm, D., Flisher, A. J., Lund, C., Patel, V., Saxena, S., Thornicroft, G., & Tomlinson, M. (2007). Scale up services for mental disorders: a call for action. Lancet (London, England), 370(9594), 1241-1252.
- Zlokarnik, M. (2006). Scale‐up in chemical engineering. Ullmann’s Encyclopedia of Industrial Chemistry.