Pharmaceutical Coating Technology (Part 9)

Environmental considerations: treatment of exhaust gases from film-coating processes Graham C.Cole SUMMARY Solvents such as acetone, methylene chloride, chloroform, ethanol and methanol must be prevented from entering the environment. Two options are available: convert all the processes to aqueous-based formulations or recover all the solvent by the use of an appropriate system. Recovery is expensive and is generally the reason for pharmaceutical companies to convert coating formulations to aqueous systems or formulate aqueous coating for all new products. Where this is not possible, a solvent recovery system must be used. Some options are discussed in this chapter together with...