Towards environmentally friendly production of active pharmaceutical ingredients with a flow reactor

Mostly, the chemical industry still follows very extensive procedures when producing active pharmaceutical ingredients and other complex substances. Often, each intermediate has to be produced in a separate fashion within large reactor vessels. Chemists at Bielefeld University are working on an alternative together with international project partners: the flow method. This combines the production stages and proceeds in microreactors in which the desired substance can be produced without intermediate isolations. The European Union’s research programme is funding the project ‘ONE-FLOW’ with a total of four million Euros. Bielefeld University has now succeeded in gaining a scientist from the renowned Keio University (Japan) for the project. Dr. Yasunobu Yamashita has started his work on the project at the beginning of August.