2025 AIChE Annual Meeting

(479b) Industrial Symbiosis in Biopharma – a Circular Approach to Efficient Resource Usage

Authors

Miriam Sarkis - Presenter, Texas A&M Energy Institute
Vanessa Qian, Imperial College London
Andrea Bernardi, Imperial College London
Maria M. Papathanasiou, Imperial College London
With sustainability becoming a growing priority in the pharmaceutical sector, manufacturers are pressured to quantify and mitigate emissions where possible, whilst continuing to meet product demands at global scale [1]. Pharmaceutical manufacturing is typically water- and energy-intensive and generate significant solid waste and wastewater flows. Alongside process intensification strategies to reduce the quantified footprint per unit dose, there is scope to adopt a system-wide perspective and investigate the potential for industrial symbiosis [2]. To this end, the presented work explores the potential of footprint reduction for biopharmaceutical manufacturing networks through material, water and energy exchange with industrial clusters within the chemical sector. Critical challenges in this context relate to the strict purity requirements, contamination risk for pharmaceuticals, alongside considerations with respect to resource availability and transport-related constraints. Modelling and optimization are valuable tools to model system constraints, explore alternatives and map out potential trade-offs to inform decision-makers.

This framework integrates life cycle and techno-economic models aimed at quantifying process performance data for different technologies and industries of interest. The cost-footprint datasets serve as inputs to a multi-objective optimization formulation, which pinpoints candidate solutions allocating equipment resources and matching material exchange flows to meet target product demands. In addition to this, variability in demand and market is also considered through a scenario-based approach.

Results highlight the benefits and drawbacks of adopting on-site and inter-facility materials reuse, address the location problem of recovery hubs, and map out feasible exchanges within the system. By quantifying both the opportunities and challenges of industrial symbiosis, the study contributes to the development of a more eco-efficient an sustainable pharmaceutical sector.

References

1] Barlow, J. and Hofer, M. (2024). The UK Biopharmaceutical Sector 2024. Available at: https://www.imperial.ac.uk/media/imperial-college/research-centres-and-groups/centre-for-sectoral-economic-performance/Biopharmaceutical_Sector_2024_Brochure_Nov2024.pdf [Last access 04/04/20225]

[2] Bachmann, M., Zibunas, C., Hartmann, J., Tulus, V., Suh, S., Guillén-Gosálbez, G. and Bardow, A. (2023). Towards circular plastics within planetary boundaries. Nature Sustainability. 6(5), 599-610

[3] Chertow, M.R. (2000). Industrial Symbiosis: Literature and Taxonomy. Annual Review of Energy and the Environment, 25(1), 313–337.