Chemical manufacturing processes challenges

In addition to a contracting market, manufacturers currently face several challenges specific to pesticides. The costs of raw materials, solvents, and other chemicals needed for the reactions and purification processes have climbed in recent years. This pattern is a part of the more general rise in costs of materials associated with chemical manufacturing as a whole. 

Secure chemistry— to minimize the misuse of chemicals and chemical assets as weapons of destruction. Challenges for chemical scientists include the substitution of less toxic chemicals in the manufacturing process and the minimization of the accumulation and storage of hazardous intermediates and products. 

Federal, state, and local governments are demanding more and more information from manufacturers not only the size, composition, and properties of waste streams that are generated, but also what chemicals are added to the process to manufacture the final product, and descriptive information on how these chemicals are used within the process. The third major driver for pollution prevention, then, becomes control of the business. When a business does not make any waste or is below a de minimus level, then only a minimum amount of information is required by the governing bodies hence, business information is conserved. Thermodynamic principles govern that zero waste is not possible, and the technical challenge is develop manufacturing processes that produce minimum waste. 

This manufacturing process received the Presidential Green Chemistry Challenge Award (2006) for alternative synthetic pathways, the IChemE AstraZeneca Award for excellence in green chemistry and chemical engineering (2005), and the Thomas Alva Edison Patent Award (2009) for Merck s U.S. Pat. 7,468,459. 

The recovery of heavy metals from solid waste poses more challenges. The Eastman Chemical Company process for the manufacture of acetic anhydride by the carbonylation of methyl acetate involves a proprietary process for the continuous recovery of rhodium and lithium from the process tar (see Section 4.6). 

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