Technoeconomic and sustainability analysis of batch and continuous crystallization for pharmaceutical manufacturing

In pharmaceutical industries, continuous manufacturing methods have already been well established to improve productivity and process intensification. However, to better understand the trade‐offs of continuous crystallizers over the existing batch production systems, a robust technoeconomic cost and sustainability analysis is necessary to serve as a predictive decision‐making tool for manufacturers. In this study, PharmaPy, an open‐source python toolbox developed for pharmaceutical flowsheet analysis, is used to simulate the annual production cycle of a given active pharmaceutical ingredient (API) with a conventional batch system and a continuous mixed‐suspension mixed product removal layout. Both systems are optimized and compared on the basis of annual cost and the sustainability of each process. From the preliminary results, the continuous systems showed a consistently lower economic cost with slightly higher sustainability than batch systems. Similar trends were shown in other case studies, such as when considering limited campaign durations and alternate APIs.