Industrial Production of Polymeric Nanoparticles: Alternatives and Economic Analysis

Abstract

A number of studies in the last 20 years describe the development of several techniques to produce a great variety of nanoparticles applied as drug delivery systems, among them, the nanoprecipitation. However, no study analyzing the profitability of such systems was found in the literature. Therefore, in this work it is analyzed the profitability of a polymeric nanoproduct produced by the method of nanoprecipitation: the bezophenone-3, a sunscreen agent. Based on the laboratory procedures, 3 alternatives were proposed for the industrial production, including a static mixer and a ceramic membrane pre-filtration step. The simplified profitability analysis was done based on a methodology called Bare Module Cost. Its results showed that lowest sale prices were achieved when the particles are produced through the most simplified process and dividing the production in more batches per day. The procedure presented in this chapter is general and can be widely applied to other type of nanoparticles and processes.