The agrochemical industry faces increasing pressure to develop more sustainable and efficient manufacturing processes for active ingredients (AIs). This presentation explores how Syngenta is using the potential of membrane-based separation and reaction technologies in AI synthesis, offering significant advantages over conventional methods in terms of energy efficiency, waste reduction, and process intensification.

Solvent Recovery and Recycling: Nanofiltration membranes enable selective separation of materials from reaction mixtures, facilitating high solvent recovery while maintaining product purity. Pervaporation is being used on dehydration of solvent streams for recycling, breaking of azeotropic waste streams and separation of similar boiling point intermediates.

Catalyst Retention: Nanofiltration membranes retain homogeneous and heterogeneous catalysts (including precious metals) while allowing products to pass through, reducing catalyst consumption and costly recovery steps.

Process Intensification: By continuously removing products or by-products, membrane reactors shift equilibrium-limited reactions beyond thermodynamic constraints. Selective permeation of target molecules prevents over-reaction and degradation.

Product purification: Nanofiltration and reverse osmosis membranes offer precise molecular weight cut-off (MWCO) control for purification providing an alternative to distillation or crystallization when needed.

Aqueous waste treatment: Nanofiltration membranes treat process wastewater, removing, dissolved organics, and trace AIs to achieve discharge standards. Concentrated retentate streams enable recovery of valuable by-products or lower disposal costs/environmental impact.