(650c) Life Cycle Assessment of a Flow Synthesis of Paracetamol from Bio-Waste Feedstock ?-Pinene

An impending climate catastrophe along with ongoing depletion of natural resources urges a movement towards a sustainable economy based on biomass feedstock and valorisation of industrial waste streams. Here, terpenes generated as by-product of Kraft paper pulping represent an interesting class of currently underutilised waste molecules^[1],[2]. Recent research on utilisation of waste terpenes has demonstrated possible synthesis pathways for continuous flow manufacture of paracetamol from β-pinene^[3]. However, without understanding the environmental impacts associated with up-scaled production, it is unclear whether pharmaceutical synthesis from bio-waste derived β-pinene represents a green alternative to conventional, fossil fuel based production routes.

This study aimed to quantify the expected environmental impacts of industrial-scale paracetamol manufacture from β-pinene from a life-cycle perspective considering a daily production capacity of 1 tonne. For this purpose, process models of up-scaled, continuous paracetamol manufacture were developed in Aspen Plus, and a complete Life Cycle Inventory (LCI) was predicted. The LCI results were used in connection with ecoinvent 3.7 database to perform a Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) of the investigated process in GaBi software. The obtained LCA results allowed to conduct a hotspot analysis of the novel process revealing key process impact contributors. Furthermore, comparative feedstock analysis showed that bio-waste derived β-pinene can indeed be a more sustainable feedstock source than benzene. Overall, the process LCA results represent highly conservative estimates given the early design stage, and thus promise to surpass environmental performance of standard industry practises once optimised. The results presented in this study can serve as a basis for comparison against conventional paracetamol production LCA datasets where available.

References

[1] K. A. C. Vespermann et al., Biotransformation of α- and β-pinene into flavor compounds, Applied Microbiology and Biotechnology 101 (2017) 1805–1817.

[2] D. Helmdach, P. Yaseneva, P. K. Heer, A. M. Schweidtmann & A. A. A Lapkin, Multiobjective Optimization Including Results of Life Cycle Assessment in Developing Biorenewables-Based Processes, ChemSusChem 10 (2017) 3632–3643.

[3] P. Plucinski, D. Mattia, D. Patterson & L. Torrente Murciano, Terpene-based Manufacturing for Sustainable Chemical feedstocks. Available at: https://researchportal.bath.ac.uk/en/projects/terpene-based-manufacturin.... (Accessed: 1st April 2022)