Environmentally Sustainable Solvents for Natural Pharmaceutical Extraction Processes

澳大利亚供应世界上25%的止痛药用阿片剂，这为澳大利亚带来了2亿美元的出口产业。活性药物成分在葛兰素史克(GSK)的港口仙女加工厂使用基于溶剂提取的工艺进行提取和纯化。该项目小组与葛兰素史克一起，旨在研究使用环境可持续的生物衍生天然溶剂来取代当前工艺中使用的挥发性有机化合物(VOC)化石燃料溶剂。由于与挥发性有机化合物有关的环境和健康问题，替代溶剂的开发不仅对葛兰素史克，而且对也使用基于挥发性有机化合物的溶剂提取工艺的一系列其他加工工业都有很大的好处。

Australia supplies 25 per cent of the world's pain relieving medicinal opiates which contributes to a $200 million export industry for Australia. The active pharmaceutical ingredients are extracted and purified at GlaxoSmithKline’s (GSK) Port Fairy processing plant using a solvent extraction based process. Together with GSK the project team aim to examine the use of environmentally sustainable bio-derived natural solvents to replace the volatile organic compound (VOC) fossil fuels based solvents used in the current process. Due to environmental and health concerns associated with VOCs the development of alternative solvents will be of great benefit to not only GSK but a range of other processing industries that also use VOC based solvent extraction processes.