Good evening everyone, continuing from where I left off from part 2...
Again, if you'd like to learn a bit more of the history, that can be found back in part 1
This part will cover the R&D labs on the site, plus another of the API plants.... It was around this time that I had spotted security wandering around, so the quality of the pictures does start to go a little over the place.
If you're not too interested in the labs and would like to see more of that sweet heavy industrial machinery and pipe porn, there is a large dose of that starting on the second post.
EXPLORE
To help get a bit of a clearer idea of where I've been to on this site in previous parts, and where I'm going in this post, I've annotated a picture with my amazing MS paint skills:
1 - Wastewater treatment plant (Part 1)
2 - Combined heat and power plant (Part 1)
3 - The 5-floor ingredient plant (Part 2)
4 - R&D labs/catalyst screening facility (Part 3)
So, this was where I bumped into my lovely AZ incident controller friend. Walking into the opposite end of the room to him, with his back to me, it was quite the shock... for all of 2 seconds. It looked like whoever had done this used some of the chemical spill kits that have long sausage-shaped sandbags to stuff him.
It looked like the room he was in was mainly used for fire safety and control.
It was extremely tempting to try one of these on...
Moving on from here, I ended up in a super long hallway, with locker rooms, offices, meeting rooms, and finally, some labs down the end.
There appeared to be at least 6 labs that looked like this, all of them varying in the amount of stripping that had taken place. Some still had machinery, boxes of equipment left on shelves, etc.
These labs were all part of the catalyst screening facility. Catalyst screening is an important part of process route scouting in pharmaceutical drug substance development.
Process research, also known as route scouting, is to design and demonstrate new synthetic routes or methodologies with a focus on IP, safety, costs, atom efficiency, quality and delivery to meet the goal of sustainability in the pharmaceutical industry.
Comprehensive catalyst screening provides breakthroughs in problematic synthetic conversions and leads to processes that are more efficient.
Chemistry that involves catalysts is highly specialized: catalysts are often air sensitive; reactions may be carried out under pressure, and are often conducted initially at small (µM) scale.
Furthermore, synthetic target molecules in R&D are becoming more complex requiring complex synthetic routes. As a result, many organizations are investing in specialized catalysis groups to support screening activities.
Many organizations have invested in elaborate lab automation equipment and robotics to speed process development efforts. However, the variety of systems required to support screening workflows require repeated, often-tedious transcription from one software interface to another; this increases the risk of errors and incorrect experiment conclusions.
Starting to make my way up to the first floor now.
The labs through these doors appeared to have been the largest in the building. Unfortunately, only a couple of fume cupboards at one end were all that remained.
There were stairs up from the first floor, but apart from roof access, there were just a couple of small electrical control rooms.
Continued in the post below - things are just about to get even juicier...
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