Solvent Screening and Selection

Screening and selection of the source plasma will only avoid contamination by known pathogens. The protein purification steps and specific virus reduction methods used in production processes, however, will inactivate and/or remove both known and unknown viruses. Terminal virus inactivation treatments are applied to product in final container and must balance virus inactivation with any modifications to protein immunogenicity, activity, and yield. While many upstream virus inactivation steps rely on chemical methods that involve the addition and subsequent removal of toxic agents (e.g., solvent/detergent), physical methods for virus inactivation, such as pH and heat, are used for terminal steps. 

Crystallization is widely used for chiral purification. Development of such a crystallization method involves determination of racemate type, solvent screening, temperature selection, and definition of system composition. Construction of a ternary solubility phase diagram is instrumental during this process. However, constmcting phase diagrams in different solvents at various temperatures is time consuming and requires a large quantity of compound. Perhaps... 

A BDS patent [106] was awarded for the use of biocatalysts belonging to the group of Pseudomonas, Flavobacterium, Enterobacter, Aeromonas, Bacillus, or Corynebac-terium. One of the strains P. putida was further developed by mutation of the parent strain to obtain organic solvent-resistant mutants [107], The mutated strains were screened by selective cultivation in the presence of 0.1% to 10% by volume (v/v) of concentrations of a toxic organic solvent. The specific mutated strains obtained were P. putida No. 69-1 (PERM BP-4519), P. putida No. 69-2 (PERM BP-4520), and P. putida No. 69-3 (PERM BP-4521). 

NRTL-SAC has been demonstrated through the case study on Cimetidine as a valuable aid to solubility data assessment and targeted solvent selection for crystallization process design. The average model error is typically 0.5 Ln (x) [1] and is sufficient as a solvent screening tool. Methods that can deliver greater accuracy would increase the value and utility of these techniques. It is impressive in the case of Cimetidine that the NRTL-SAC correlation is capable of reasonable accuracy and predictive capability on the basis of just 2 fitted parameters. Further work to extend the solvent database and optimize the descriptive parameters will be beneficial, and are planned by the developers. 

Separation processes (both liquid-liquid and gas-liquid) are a key element in many industrial processes. For this application, solvent molecules are built from UNIFAC submolecular groups, and the relevant properties of the new molecules such as distribution coefficients and selectivities are estimated. Strategies for the design of solvents for separation processes were initially formulated and later extended to better model the processes of solvent synthesis, solvent evaluation, and solvent screening. A method for solvent design for liquid-liquid extraction has been developed. 

After the selection of the catalyst, other reaction parameters were optimized. A solvent screen revealed that methanol was a good solvent to achieve full conversion. Using other alcohols resulted in significantly slower reaction rates. The reaction did not take place using nonprotic solvents. Faster reactions were observed in 2,2,2-trifluoroethanol (TFE), but TFE was not a desirable solvent from both cost and waste perspectives. 

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