Going Small, Thinking Big

Operational Excellence & Lean Six Sigma In October, Bayer Technology Services (BTS; Leverkusen, Germany) announced a buyout of Ehrfeld Mikrotechnik (Wendelsheim, Germany), the start-up manufacturing firm of microreactor guru Wolfgang Ehrfeld. In September, Boehringer Ingelheim (Ingelheim, Germany) purchased another manufacturer, STEAG microParts, from STEAG AG (Essen, Germany). And in August, Clariant Pharmaceuticals, Inc. (Muttenz, Switzerland) established the Clariant Competence Centre for Microreactor Technology at its Frankfurt location to further develop the technology — for niche applications at first, though a company spokesperson estimates that eventually 15 to 20 percent of all synthetic processes at the plant could be done by microreactors. Another firm to have gotten on board is GlaxoSmithKline. At its Harlow, U.K. site, GSK has invested in and partnered with the British firm Syrris, Inc. (Herts, U.K.), a maker of modular, continuous flow microreaction systems which can be tailored for multiple purposes. The symbiotic relationship between a major pharma and a fledgling manufacturer is typical of the micro landscape today. “They have provided the science, we have provided the engineering,” says Richard Gray, Syrris’s commercial director. The miniaturization trend began in the laboratory, driven by the need to expand and quickly analyze sample libraries, but it has since moved on to manufacturing. In part because the technology is fairly new, and hasn’t really been standardized yet, people tend to use the term microreactor rather loosely. In its simplest form, it is a small reactor — with channel dimensions in the neighborhood of one micron to 500 microns or even one millimeter in diameter. It can work in concert with any number of similar reactors and devices on one or several unit operations, initially for performing lab functions with the potential to be scalable for manufacturing. Benchmark Your Automation and Control Programs Virtual Sensors for Advanced Pharmaceutical Process Control 2009