Effective process development relies on evaluating potential improvement ideas rapidly to focus time and resources on the ideas that are the most promising. Targeted experimentation can be very beneficial in this regard, obtaining the requisite amount of data while reducing the number of necessary experiments. Here a specific application will be discussed in which a potential switch to a less expensive solvent was considered for part of a multistep synthesis of an agrochemical compound. Although an initial proof of concept experiment looked promising, the idea was ultimately discarded through the use of select small-scale microwave reactor experiments, in-process analytical tools, and kinetic modeling that demonstrated the low likelihood of achieving the necessary yield and quality targets. The methodology in applying each of these capabilities to this study will be discussed.
