Analysis of the recovery of aqueous solvents from the pharmaceutical industry: isopropanol and ethyl acetate

Abstract

It is crucial to work with as few compounds as possible in the pharmaceutical industry when recovering different products, as any compound added to the mixture leaves traces. In the specific case of this study, the recovery of isopropyl alcohol, ethyl acetate and water from the production of a commercial antibiotic called ampicillin is studied. In the literature, the use of an extracting agent is proposed to facilitate their recovery due to ethyl acetate, and isopropyl alcohol form a complex non – ideal mixture that makes their separation difficult. However, considering that ethyl acetate and water have a zone of immiscibility allows the separation without requiring extractive agents. In this study, different feasible alternatives are proposed, which have been obtained employing the analysis of the residue curve maps and they are compared through the DSE (Distillation Sequence Efficiency) method. The DSE allows the calculation of the efficiency of rectification columns quickly using ∞/∞ analysis. The results show that out of the five proposed alternative, three can be implemented, and two of them use a smaller number of rectification columns than the one proposed in the article. In terms of efficiency, one alternative has a similar DSE to that of the literature but without extracting agents, which is an improvement