Miniaturised chemical plants in flow - Producing better with less

The global events of the 2020s are leading the world to rethink certain models which, until recently, seemed irreplaceable. The COVID pandemic has shattered the economic patterns of certain manufactured products, among which the severe limit to the supply of fine chemicals, and therefore of active pharmaceutical ingredients (APIs), has been highlighted. This has led to severe shortages of strategic medicines, jeopardizing the ability of national healthcare systems to treat their citizens. Most of the so-called "industrialized" countries showed the limits of their industrial apparatus in this emergency situation. What's more, the Russian-Ukrainian conflict has exacerbated this situation, with an urgent need for rapid and radical change in the reorganization of manufacturing industry.

Since the early 2000s, the production of fine chemicals, such as APIs and their intermediates (most of which have fallen into the public domain), has been almost entirely relocated to distant countries, both for reasons of cost and lesser environmental and safety constraints, which is intrinsically linked to the production method for these compounds: macroscopic batch reactors. Indeed, the use of batch reactors means that, to produce more, their capacity has to be increased, which entails high investment and a large workforce, as well as significant safety constraints. This logic has led to the dismantling of chemical production facilities in many countries.

Unlike other sciences, which have revolutionized their concepts over the last few decades, organic synthesis (the cornerstone of drug manufacturing) has used more or less the same tools since the 1950s, and is still based on knowledge that is often empirical. In 2024, however, there is an alternative technology to synthesis in macrobatch reactors: miniaturized continuous-flow reactors. Where conventional production requires very large installations, continuous flow synthesis uses a production tool the size of a household appliance.