Environmentally Sustainable Solvents for Natural Pharmaceutical Extraction Processes

澳大利亚提供了世界上25%的止痛药用阿片剂，为澳大利亚的出口业贡献了2亿美元。活性药物成分在葛兰素史克（GSK）Port Fairy加工厂使用溶剂提取工艺进行提取和纯化。该项目团队与GSK合作，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VOC相关的环境和健康问题，替代溶剂的开发不仅对GSK而且对一系列也使用基于VOC的溶剂萃取工艺的其他加工行业都有很大的好处。

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.