Major Applications of OSN Membrane Technology in Pharmaceuticals and Fine Chemicals

For more than half a century, membranes have been used for molecular scale separations in aqueous solutions with applications in reverse osmosis and nanofiltration – e.g. waste water treatment, water desalination, dairy industry - but the new frontier in liquid filtrations is molecular separation in organic solvents [1].  Organic solvent nanofiltration (OSN) is an emerging technique used for product purification in a wide range of process chemical industries (e.g. Pharmaceuticals, Specialty, Chemicals, Petrochemicals, Natural Oils etc.) where molecules in the 150 to 1,500 Da range need to be separated or concentrated in presence of an organic solvent.  The recent breakthrough in OSN technology with the commercialization of the DuraMem® and PuraMem® range of membranes has opened up possibilities for these OSN applications in a variety of organic solvents ranging from non-polar through polar to polar aprotic.

In majority of process chemistries, up to 90% of the capital investment involves separation processes [2].  OSN can be applied as a unit operation on its own or in combination with other unit operation(s) to achieve various separation tasks.  In the Pharmaceutical industry alone, examples include purification of raw materials, concentration of temperature sensitive products, solvent swap of temperature sensitive products, product recovery from mother-liquors, color impurity removal, homogeneous catalyst removal, recovery and reuse, concentration of chromatography streams etc.

The relevance and importance of these applications will be demonstrated through several major case studies on applying OSN.  Benefits such as mass efficiency via increase of product yields, reduction of process time, and reduced use of high-energy consuming technologies will be presented.

References:

[1] Vandezande, P., Gevers, L.E.M., Vankelecom, I.F.J., “Solvent resistant nanofiltration: Separating on a molecular level”, Chemical Society Reviews, 37 (2), 365-405 (2008).

[2] Cuperus P., Ebert K., “Non-aqueous application of NF”, in Nanofiltration - principles and applications, Elsevier, 521-536, 2002.