Life Cycle Assessment of an Enzymatic Ibuprofen Production Process with Automatic Recycling and Purification

In this study, the environmental impacts of three ibuprofen production routes, namely, the BHC, the Bogdan, and the newly developed enzymatic synthetic routes (modified Bogdan process), are assessed and compared by the application of life cycle assessment (LCA). Based on the data obtained through literature and laboratory-based experiments, a pilot-scale production with a capacity of 500 g/day of ibuprofen was simulated to generate inventory data for the LCA study, using Aspen Plus V11. The well-established BHC process was chosen as the benchmark to quantify the operational and environmental benefits of the innovative enzymatic Bogdan flow synthetic process. The comparison highlights the benefit of adopting the modified Bogdan synthesis route via an enzymatic catalyst. Results show that a general reduction of environmental impact is achievable across the whole set of impact categories of the analysis, and the magnitude of such reduction depends on the efficiency of recycling in the production system. Considering a 50% efficiency of recycling, the modified Bogdan system achieves lower environmental impacts in some impact categories like Acidification, Ecotoxicity of freshwater, Human toxicity, Particulate matter, and Resource depletion (mineral, fossils, renewables) while having higher impacts on the rest of the impact categories. Yet, the new process proposed here scores better environmental performances in all of the impact categories when the enzyme recycling is close to 100%, which is promising for future technology development.