Green Chemistry
Green chemistry is the design of chemical products and processes that decrease or eliminate the use and generation of hazardous substances, to reduce pollution at its source. Baxter's R&D teams pursue green chemistry projects leading to environmental and economic benefits. These initiatives include hazardous reagent substitution, reduced use of toxic substances and the use of micro-analytical techniques such as capillary electrophoresis and narrow columns in high performance liquid chromatography (HPLC) to limit waste.
Emerging technologies can produce environmental benefits while saving time and money. One example is the shift from HPLC to micro-parallel liquid chromatography (LC). Baxter uses LC to analyze the components of a substance, to assess potency and other properties. Micro-parallel LC, which analyzes much smaller amounts of a substance than HPLC and conducts a large number of these assessments simultaneously, can reduce experiment time by 80 percent and solvent use by up to 90 percent, while maintaining or even improving analytical quality.
Micro-parallel LC can also be used to test drug samples during the manufacturing process, whereas HPLC is not feasible due to greater time requirements. Micro-parallel LC provides more specific information than alternative methods. This lowers the percentage of batches that cannot be released because they fail to meet Baxter's strict quality standards, also reducing cost and waste.
