Abbott Laboratories
North Chicago, Illinois
Shumaila Khan
Northwestern University, Evanston
Abbott Laboratories is a major health care company. The main function
of the Specialty Products Division (SPD) in North Chicago is bulk drug
development and pharmaceutical manufacturing. The intern was responsible
for creating a pollution prevention (P2) process review tool to identify
opportunities in processing where wastes can be minimized by process
modifications.
Result:
The intern was able to design the P2 process review tool and utilized
the tool to review two drug-manufacturing processes. For one of the
drugs, only one batch is scheduled for processing during 2004 and
recommendations for this process will not be implemented due to cost
effectiveness.
For the other drug process, the opportunities identified from the P2
process review tool that has the potential to save over $80,000 per year
includes:
- Eliminating a methanol rinse from one stage of the process. This
will reduce the batch time by over 12 hours.
- Reducing methanol
use by 200 gallons.
- Replacing methanol with isopropanol
or acetone. Acetone is not a volatile organic compound or a hazardous
air pollutant.
- Feasibly recovering the solvents and selling to third parties for
recycling. The company currently pays to have the solvents hauled off-site
for
energy recovery.
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