Seamless Scaleup of Continuous Flow Reactor from Lab to 10,000 Metric-Tons Annual Throughput

As environmental and safety regulations become more stringent, the pharmaceutical and fine chemical industries are increasingly looking to continuous flow manufacturing as a less risky, more efficient, and less costly alternative to traditional batch processing. The deadly chemical plant blast in eastern China on March 21, 2019 has led to acceleration of inherently safer technology adoption such as continuous microreactors with integrated process controls.

Corning reactor technologies have been promoting continuous flow process applications globally and launched a portfolio of reactor & system products, covered from the lab to industrials. By integrating high-quality SiC modules and stainless-steel parts into full balanced reactor design, we have achieved superior thermal conductivity, good system thermal shock & explosion shock resistances, leading to higher throughput while keeping seamless scaleup, including newly released G5 reactor at 10,000 metric tons annual throughput per unit.

Because of its superior safety especially much low shock wave shown in simulated explosion, they are particularly suitable for reactions that involve unstable intermediates/product, process exothermicity, limiting mass transfer, and/or the residence time distribution direct impacting the final quality.

Enclosed photo shown the installed process in China with two reaction steps (Diazotization, Hydrolysis) followed by phase separation and extraction et al. 6´3000L batch reactors for diazotization were replaced by 1´G5 reactor with 2L reaction volume, and 3´6000L batch reactors for hydrolysis were replaced by 1´G5 reactor of 2L with two tube reactors in parallel.

G5 continuous flow production delivered inherently safer and environmentally friendly manufacturing process, plus an increased yield (12 more percentage points), which has led to the ROI of the project less than18 months.

This presentation will be focusing on two essential subjects with continuous flow reactor process (1) inherently safer characteristics and (2) seamless scaleup with real industrial examples.