Prescribing a Purification Solution for the Pharmaceutical Sector

For obvious reasons, pharma is a highly regulated sector. This article will focus on regulations related to air & wastewater emissions generated by pharmaceutical production.

As concerns the EU, companies should meet air emissions limits mandated by the BAT Conclusions for Common Waste Gas Management and Treatment Systems in the Chemical Sector (WGC). These more stringent limits will come into force by the end of 2026, therefore pharma producers might need to adapt their purification setups. Additionally, the revised Urban Wastewater Treatment Directive came into force in January 2025. According to this rule, which must be implemented by each EU member state by July 2027, pharma companies will have to pay at least 80% of the cost related to the removal of harmful substances (e.g., micropollutants) from their wastewater.

Moving to the UK, MHRA has implemented stricter oversight on manufacturing, traceability & environmental risk. While developing their own BAT Conclusions, the UK still refers to the EU limits for pharma plants’ emissions. 

Adsorbable Organic Halogens (AOX) are some of the most typical contaminants affecting pharma wastewater. These include chlorinated solvents such as dichloromethane (DCM), which is released by cleaning, disinfecting, and degreasing products in pharma process water. In the pharmaceutical industry, DCM is used to extract chemicals from plants or foods for medicines such as steroids, antibiotics and vitamins. However, it is toxic to human health, with the known potential to irritate the skin and damage the central nervous system.

Among non-biodegradable AOX are Persistent Organic Pollutants (POPs), which might be present in active pharmaceutical ingredient (API) residue solutions. POPs are also released into wastewater when cleaning reactors. These contaminants bioaccumulate in the environment, water, plants, and animals, where they enter the human food chain and our drinking water systems. Many are carcinogenic, mutagenic and reprotoxic (CMR).

Regular cleaning occurring in pharma labs results in low volumes of wastewater containing high concentrations of chemicals and active ingredients residues. Due to the mixture of compounds involved, multiple treatments may be required. Thanks to their versatility, activated carbon filtration can work in combination with other techniques:

• before osmosis to remove chlorinated compounds that would damage membranes;
• after other technologies to reduce pollutants concentration to very low limits, to comply with strict regulations;
• upstream of biotreatments to remove biocides.

Moreover, activated carbon filtration is used as pre-treatment to purify wastewater before sending it to a wastewater treatment plant (WWTP), to meet acceptance limits.

Removing DCM from microsphere production air emissions

A client is making microspheres and had to treat air emissions generated upon venting their reactor. With a flowrate of 400 m³/h, the gas stream contained a VOC (mostly DCM) concentration of 4,000 mg/m³ with peaks up to 20,000 mg/m³. Given the stringent local emission limit (50 mg/m³), the customer reached out to DESOTEC for a solution. After installing 3 AIRCON 2000 in series, the outlet VOC level complied with the regulation threshold. 

Tackling multiple air emission pollutants from drugs manufacturing

A company has to remove carcinogenic, mutagenic, and reprotoxic (CMR) molecules as well as micropollutants and drug residues from its air emissions. However, their purification process, which was using gas combustion, had high operational costs (especially where production is discontinuous) and very high CO₂ emissions. To find a cheaper and greener solution, the firm turned to DESOTEC. Our setup, based on a series of mobile AIRCON filters, reduced operational cost by 25% and implied 10x fewer CO₂ emissions. Also, to compensate for the discontinuous treatment process and avoid any hotspot risk, we ensured a continuous ventilation over the installation.

Solving the bromopropane air contamination issue for Big Pharma

A well-known French company had to remove bromopropane from air emissions generated from production processes and storage tanks venting. Their polluted stream had a flowrate of 5,400 m³/h and a bromopropane concentration of 200 mg/m³. Pressured by local authorities to meet an emission limit of 2 mg/m³, the firm contacted DESOTEC. Thanks to 4 AIRCON V-L mobile filters, the company complied with the environmental regulation. In addition to this, we reactivated the spent carbon at our facilities to make the purification process more sustainable.

Controlling COD in pharma wastewater

A customer is using benzalkonium chloride as a disinfectant for their reactors. The resulting wastewater has a COD level of 500 mg/L. Being a discontinuous process (flowrate of 1 m³/h), the company thought DESOTEC’s activated carbon mobile filtration would be a good fit. After a first inspection, we installed a MOBICON 1000 filter that was able to completely remove COD from the client's wastewater.

Increasing AOX removal efficiency 

A customer’s wastewater contained both AOX (chloroform, chlorophenols and chlorobenzene) and organic components. To comply with local emission limits, the firm put in place a two-step treatment: a bio-filtration system to break down organic components, followed by activated carbon to remove AOX. Yet, because of an inefficient set-up, they found the carbon to become saturated quickly, and needed to be exchanged every three weeks. This meant pausing production and disposing of a large quantity of spent carbon on a frequent basis. To make their AOX removal more cost-efficient, the customer asked DESOTEC for help. We installed a large MOBICON that completely removed AOX from wastewater and required an exchange only once a year. Besides reducing cost, this intervention streamlined the production process.