Enabling energy‐efficient manufacturing of pharmaceutical solid oral dosage forms via integrated techno‐economic analysis and advanced process modeling

• Published in: Journal of advanced manufacturing and processing 2022-10, Vol.4 (4), p.n/a
• Main Authors: Sampat, Chaitanya, Kotamarthy, Lalith, Bhalode, Pooja, Chen, Yingjie, Dan, Ashley, Parvani, Sania, Dholakia, Zeal, Singh, Ravendra, Glasser, Benjamin J., Ierapetritou, Marianthi, Ramachandran, Rohit
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Subjects: advanced process models; Cost control; Design of experiments; Economic analysis; Economic models; Energy consumption; Energy costs; Energy efficiency; Granulation; Industry 4.0; Manufacturing; Operating costs; Pharmaceutical industry; Pharmaceuticals; Power consumption; Process parameters; Product quality; Production costs; smart manufacturing; Statistical models; techno‐economic analysis
• ISSN: 2637-403X; 2637-403X
• DOI: 10.1002/amp2.10136

The global pharmaceutical industry is a trillion‐dollar market. However, the pharmaceutical sector often lags in manufacturing innovation and automation which limits its potential to maximize energy efficiency. The integration of techno‐economic analysis (TEA) with advanced process models as part of an overarching smart manufacturing platform, can help industries create business models, which can be adapted for manufacturing to reduce energy consumption and operating costs while ensuring product quality which can further enable a more sustainable process operation. In this study, a rational design of experiment on three unit‐operations (wet granulation, drying, and milling) was performed on a batch (case 1) and continuous (case 2) pharmaceutical process to obtain experimental data. Process models for predicting product quality and energy efficiency of each of the three‐unit operations were developed. The experimental data were used to validate the models and good agreement was observed. The energy consumption of each unit operation was calculated using statistical models relating the power consumption and the process parameters. The developed process models and energy models were further integrated into a TEA framework, which quantified the energy and monetary cost of manufacturing for both batch and continuous manufacturing cases. With this integrated framework, energy costs savings of ~33% was obtained in the continuous manufacturing process (case 2) over the batch process (case 1).