As exothermic reactions pose inherent safety hazards in chemical development and scale-up, either constant supervision or automated and safe dosing control has traditionally been required.
This case study describes how the Process R&D Group at a leading pharmaceutical company, Grünenthal GmbH, Germany, now runs scale-up experiments safely without manual supervision, in order to increase productivity without increasing staff. Grünenthal Process R&D now automates semi-batch dosing in their multi-liter jacketed lab reactors, and runs highly exothermic reactions unattended without compromising safety.