Pharmaceutical concentration using organic solvent forward osmosis for solvent recovery

Abstract

The organic solvent forward osmosis (OSFO) process can simultaneously concentrate the active pharmaceutical ingredients (APIs) and recover the organic solvents. Here we demonstrate and evaluate an OSFO process for solvent recovery. In this demonstration, OSFO was conducted in different solvents with different draw solutes. The OSFO process shows rejections >98% when recovering organic solvents from different feed solutions, even when the feed concentration is as high as 20 wt%. More importantly, all systems exhibit relatively low ratios of reverse solute flux to solvent flux, indicating that the adverse effects of using hazardous draw solutions could be minimized. Nevertheless, the use of non-hazardous draw solutes such as citric acid is highly recommended to remove any potential risk, and it has been demonstrated. Herein, the OSFO process is a promising technology for solvent recovery as it possesses a reasonable solvent flux, low reverse solute flux and requires no external pressure.

Forward Osmosis Application in Manufacturing Industries: A Short Review

“…Two research papers published results from forward osmosis experiments treating pharmaceutical liquids. Cui et al (2018) reported about FO experiments in which they used typical pharmaceutical solvents as FS, which usually contain pharmaceutical active ingredients (API) [ 130 ]. The aim was to recover the organic solvents and reject the API.…”

Molecularly tunable thin-film nanocomposite membranes with enhanced molecular sieving for organic solvent forward osmosis

“…As the transport resistance of the developed membrane was mainly determined by the polyamide selective layer, the thickness of the polyamide layer was applied here. The solubility of a membrane was measured using the solvent evaporation method as described previously 9 . Briefly, once the free-standing polyamide thin film was fabricated, it was dried in a vacuum oven to remove the moisture.…”

“…Among them, organic solvent nanofiltration (OSN) is widely studied but the high operating pressure and fouling tendency may increase the capital and operating costs 7 . Recently, a novel process, organic solvent forward osmosis (OSFO), which was initially proposed by Lively and Sholl 8 , and then demonstrated by Cui and Chung 9 , is promising to lower the fouling tendency and treat the highly concentrated feed solutions. Similar to forward osmosis (FO) in water reuse processes 10 , both valuable products and organic solvents can be recovered from pharmaceutical streams.…”

Membrane Separation in Organic Liquid: Technologies, Achievements, and Opportunities

“…Subsequently, the diluted draw solution may be regenerated by filtration, distillation, or evaporation. Since no external pressure is needed, OSFO offers a number of advantages over the pressure‐driven processes, such as lower fouling tendency and higher flux recovery, which would lower the operation and maintenance costs . In addition, OSFO is expected to be utilized in the challenging separations where the osmotic pressure of solvent is too high to be operated in the pressure‐driven process such as OSN and OSRO.…”