Design of a batch plant for quinoline derivatives manufacture

Abstract

Quinoline is a heterocyclic compound with derivatives having a wide range of applications in the pharmaceutical industry. Traditionally, quinolines have been synthesized from anilines. Batch plants are used due to their flexibility in the production of different chemicals. Moreover, demand of the market does not justify the need of a continuous supply of quinolines, so it will be produced in batches to control which quinoline derivative is needed. The main objective of this project is to design a batch plant to produce various quinoline derivatives departing from a laboratory recipe to synthesize a single derivative. Design has been done based on one derivative, but others could be introduced thanks to the flexibility of both quinoline and process. Quinoline traditional synthesis are similar, departing from a simple aniline. Manufacture process from the patents are flexible because more than one derivative can be produced from a similar reaction path. A study on quinoline derivatives manufacture patents has been conducted to find a suitable process that can be scaled up. Once an appropriate recipe has been found, it has been introduced in Aspen Batch Process Developer® and brought from laboratory to an industrial scale. In order to get to this industrial scale, quinoline derivative production has been raised from 29 g to 70 kg and new equipment units of the process have been selected analysing their size utilization and occupancy time. To implement campaign schedule, total amount of quinoline derivative has been fixed to 2000 kg. Batch number and its size have been studied to find the combination with a shorter total time. Optimal campaign has been found to be 21 batches of 97.32 kg to produce 2000 kg of quinoline derivative in 22.5 days