Reactor cooling for Pharmaceutical API Production

Reactor cooling is critical to the production of API’s used in Ibuprofen at this pharmaceutical plant. Reliability issues of their existing chillers were reducing their cooling capabilities and threatening to halt production completely. The brine in the reactors needed to be kept at -15ºF to avoid solids forming and the brine quality falling. Other providers could not offer a -15ºF temporary solution due to the complexity of the technology. To ensure full capacity, they needed a solution that could achieve -15ºF output that could be engineered and quickly installed.

Cooling specialists from Aggreko Process Services (APS) designed a temporary solution that would create a common chiller line for the Ibuprofen brine chiller loop. We installed a total of (8) 200T -150F chillers that cooled both the brine loop directly and a large cold tank. This allowed the process to continually cool the tank to prep for large batches while also rejecting the most amount of heat closest to the reactor.

Thanks to the additional cooling provided, the customer was able to maintain full production levels to keep up with demand. This ensured they were able to deliver products critical to the supply chain whilst maximizing their own revenue and profits.