Analytische Chemie
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Process monitoring with online NMR spectroscopy – An enabler for “Industrie 4.0” in process industry
(2018)
Improvement in deep process understanding is a mandatory prerequisite for the application of modern concepts like Industrial Internet of Things (IIoT) or “Industrie 4.0”. This is particularly relevant in new process concepts such as intensified production in modularized plants. The direct hyphenation with online methods of process analytical technology (PAT) allows profound insights into the actual reactions within chemical and pharmaceutical production steps and provides necessary information for associated control strategies.
While the industrial application of online Raman spectroscopy has already been successfully demonstrated, low-field NMR spectroscopy is not yet adequately developed as an online method for use in process industry. The high information content combined with the low calibration effort makes NMR spectroscopy a highly promising method for modern process automation with a high flexibility due to short set-up times and low requirements regarding validation. This is a major advantage especially within multi-purpose production plants, as well as for processes suffering from fluctuating quality of raw materials. NMR spectroscopy has a high potential for direct quantitative information, while cutting the calibration and validation needs to a minimum and thus exhibiting short set-up times.
Within the EU project CONSENS, an NMR analyzer for direct implementation in an industrial process environment was developed based on a commercially available laboratory instrument. The challenge was not only the hyphenation to the production plant itself, but also to fulfill all requirements of chemical industry, e.g., explosion safety regulations (ATEX), robust automation and modern, as well as classical communication interfaces. The presented NMR module involves a compact spectrometer together with an acquisition unit and a programmable logic controller for automated data preparation (phasing, baseline correction), and evaluation. The module transforms the acquired online spectra of various technically relevant reactions to either conventional 4‒20 mA signals as well as WiFi based OPC-UA communication protocols.
The concept was evaluated on two processes of pharmaceutical and chemical industry. As the first example the continuous synthesis of 2-nitrodiphenylamine starting from aniline and o-fluoronitrobenzene, activated by an organometallic lithium reagent, was studied. This application is highly demanding for a reliable automated evaluation of the obtained NMR spectra, which was realized by developing a physically motivated model-based approach.
In the second example, a stage of the synthesis of the industrially important solvent tetrahydrofurane consisting of the catalytic hydrogenation of 2-butine-1,4-diol was monitored. This reaction is proceeding via an intermediate product and suffers from competitive reaction paths. In this application different spectroscopic methods were combined with the data obtained from classical process sensors, e.g., pressure, temperature and flow transducers for the development of innovative control concepts.
Chemical companies must find new paths to successfully survive in a changing environment. The potential of digital technologies belongs to these. Flexible and modular chemical plants can produce various high-quality products using multi-purpose equipment with short down-times between campaigns and reduce time to market for new products. Intensified continuous production plants allow for difficult to produce compounds.
Therefore, fully automated “chemical” process control along with real-time quality control are prerequisites to such concepts and thus should be based on “chemical” information. The advances of a fully automated NMR sensor were exploited, using a given pharmaceutical lithiation reaction as an example process within a modular pilot plant. A commercially available benchtop NMR spectrometer was integrated to the full requirements of an automated chemical production environment such as , e.g., explosion safety, field communication, and robust evaluation of sensor data. It was thereof used for direct loop advanced process control and real-time optimization of the process. NMR appeared as preeminent online analytical tool and allowed using a modular data analysis tool, which even served as reliable reference method for further PAT applications.
In future, such fully integrated and intelligently interconnecting “smart” systems and processes can speed up the high-quality production of specialty chemicals and pharmaceuticals.
Chemical and pharmaceutical companies have to find new paths to survive successfully in a changing environment, while also finding more flexible ways of product and process development to bring their products to market more quickly – especially high-quality high-end products like fine chemicals or pharmaceuticals. The potential of digital technologies belongs to these.
A current approach uses flexible and modular chemical production units, which can produce different high-quality products using multi-purpose equipment with short downtimes between campaigns and reduce the time to market of new products. At the same time, we need to move towards knowledge-based production that takes into account all essential equipment, process and control data from plants and laboratories and makes valuable expertise available and transferable. The potential of data from production together with its contextual information is often not yet consistently used today for a comprehensive understanding of production.
By giving examples this paper outlines a possible more holistic approach to digitalisation and the use of machine-based methods in the production of specialty chemicals and pharmaceuticals through the introduction of integrated and networked systems and processes.