AFC Sets Up New Extraction Process

Ampac Fine Chemicals (AFC) has successfully qualified, validated and installed a continuous extraction process in a cGMP manufacturing environment, reported Processingtalk.

Reportedly, the company made the modification with the consent of the AFC customers. The new process includes three Hastelloy liquid-liquid centrifuges (LLCs) in series. LLC’s will be used to manufacture active pharmaceutical ingredient (API) and will replace traditional batch extraction process.

As quoted by Processingtalk, Richard Beatty, vice-president of product management at AFC, said: ‘The LLC process improvement was demonstrated last year at bench scale by the research-and-development group and was transferred to commercial scale this summer.

‘This change in the process is a major milestone in achieving an increased throughput by removing a volumetric pinch point in the overall process. As a result, we could increase the batch size significantly and thus reduce costs.”