REVIEW: With the growing awareness of environmental protection, Chinese API manufacturers forced by the surrounding environmental pressures continue to migrate, move to the suburbs from the city center, moved from a non-chemical clusters Chemical Industry Park, moved to less developed western regions from the eastern coastal areas . Some centuries-old pharmaceutical companies in Europe and America can always stand on the city and live in peace with the surrounding residents. What kind of inevitable and mystery exists behind this huge contrast? Here, I want to share some ideas with you through my personal experience over the years.
Image taken from China Environmental News
Chinese and foreign pharmaceutical companies have different fates
This summer, I visited an old customer of Nawei, a European pharmaceutical company with a history of 100 years. To my surprise, this raw material manufacturing plant was set up in a city centre in Europe, with tightly populated residential areas. When I walked into the factory of this European pharmaceutical company, I couldn’t feel that it was a factory building raw materials. I could not smell the unique flavor around the general pharmaceutical factory, nor could I hear the noise of the factory machine. Walking in the factory area, people have to marvel at the ability of European pharmaceutical companies to control sewage and prevent noise production. This is why European pharmaceutical companies can survive in the city center without relocation.
In the past few years, I have had the opportunity to visit hundreds of Chinese pharmaceutical companies, both domestically best and small workshops. But most of them can close their eyes and smell through the nose to determine whether they have arrived at the pharmaceutical factory. The emission problem can be seen. In recent years, there have been news that China's raw material pharmaceutical factories have been ordered to suspend production or withdraw from the market. For example, Qilu Pharmaceutical's Inner Mongolia factory has been rectified by the Hohhot Environmental Protection Bureau because of the odor-disturbing problem, and its Linyi County plant still has similar rotten eggs during the shutdown period. the taste of. Even some famous old pharmaceutical companies can't escape this ending. For example, in the winter of 2016, Shijiazhuang launched the most severe smog smashing incident in history, which caused a strong reaction in the country. Many large pharmaceutical companies such as Huabei Pharmaceutical and Shijiazhuang were ordered to stop production, and these old pharmaceutical companies It has created a history of antibiotic production in China, and made important contributions to changing the situation of lack of medical care in China. However, today, with the increasing awareness of environmental protection, it is impossible to continue the glory of yesterday and face the desperate fate of being rectified or even eliminated.
With the improvement of people's living standards, the requirements for the environment for survival are getting higher and higher, and the emission of waste gas, waste liquid and waste residue generated by antibiotics and raw material manufacturers in the production process are paying more and more attention. Drugs are necessary for treatment, and drug production is indispensable, and good mountains, good water, good air and good environment are also pursued by everyone. Europe should be the world's most important place for environmental protection. Why is this century-old pharmaceutical production plant located in the city center? How can it continuously expand its production capacity in the past 100 years of development, but it can be the most environmentally conscious and rights-conscious? Strong surrounding citizens live in peace. In the heating season this year, all the “2+26†cities in Beijing, Tianjin and Hebei and surrounding areas have stopped production of VOC emissions. China's famous pharmaceutical companies such as Huabei Pharmaceutical, an old-fashioned company that has made tremendous contributions to the development of Chinese medicine, was listed in the penalty for violation of the Air Pollution Prevention and Control Law in December this year. What is the fate of the drug companies in China and Europe?
The difference between management methods and environmental awareness leads to huge differences in pharmaceutical investment in environmental protection
Europe, the United States and Japan are developed countries, pharmaceutical technology is advanced, the government has stricter environmental protection regulations, and the national environmental protection awareness is relatively high. Pharmaceutical companies have invested heavily in environmental protection. In addition, because Europe and the United States often get the market with quality and technical advantages, the profits are relatively high, and they have the ability and resources to solve environmental problems, thus forming a virtuous cycle of “production-environment-enhancement and reproductionâ€. China is a developing country. Although China Pharmaceutical has achieved unprecedented rapid growth in the past 30 years, it has become the world's largest raw material drug producer. For example, China produces more than 90% of the world's antibiotic raw materials. However, China is a big country in the production of bulk drugs, but it is not a strong country. Its pharmaceutical production technology level, especially the level of bio-pharmaceuticals, is quite different from that of developed countries such as Europe, America and Japan. Therefore, Chinese pharmaceutical companies have gathered a large number of low-end raw materials for production, although the scale is huge but the added value is relatively low. Most of the low-end and mid-range APIs have low technical barriers and a large number of pharmaceutical companies. The competition model often relies on scale and cost advantages, thus causing a vicious circle of “production-low-price competition-overcapacityâ€. Due to the lack of sufficient profits, pharmaceutical companies cannot guarantee process improvement to improve product quality and reduce emissions. In addition, the early government’s environmental protection supervision is relatively weak, and the nationals are not aware of environmental protection, resulting in enterprises not paying much attention to environmental protection investment. . In recent years, with the rapid development of China's economy, the improvement of people's living standards and the increasing awareness of environmental protection, the pressure on environmental protection faced by pharmaceutical companies is increasing. It is not surprising that pharmaceutical companies have been frequently shut down and relocated as major polluters. .
Unbalanced regional economic development leads to huge differences in environmental supervision and market access mechanisms
In developed countries such as Europe, America and Japan, a company cannot produce in the city due to pollution emissions. It is equally impossible to produce in remote areas, and the government's supervision is everywhere. Therefore, enterprises must pay attention to environmental protection if they want to survive. In China, the regional economic development is seriously unbalanced, and the standards for environmental protection supervision by different regions are inconsistent. Therefore, on the one hand, in order to alleviate the pressure on environmental protection, the government often requires high-pollution, high-emission, high-energy-consuming enterprises to move away from urban areas. On the other hand, in order to alleviate the pressure of environmental supervision, pharmaceutical companies can only choose to move to places with low environmental protection supervision and low cost to obtain the competitive advantage of the market and the survival of enterprises. This choice has led to the effect of bad money expelling good money. That is, enterprises that attach importance to environmental protection have been eliminated from the market without a competitive advantage because of high investment costs. Enterprises that do not pay attention to environmental protection can develop because of cost advantages. Moreover, fundamentally, the relocation of production plants is only a temporary circumvention of government supervision issues, and it does not fundamentally solve the problem of sewage discharge, and may even pollute a larger area of ​​land and rivers. Once the environmental protection requirements of the region are high, they can only be relocated easily, or defend the battle against the blue sky, limit production or even stop production, and fall into an infinite loop that cannot be rid of.
Differences in the importance of pharmaceutical process technology and the ability to apply new technologies lead to huge differences in pollution emissions
Developed countries are the birthplace of advanced pharmaceutical technology and have many technical talents. Therefore, pharmaceutical companies in developed countries have mastered advanced pharmaceutical processes, with high degree of automation and low pollution emissions. In addition, pharmaceutical companies in developed countries are generally sensitive and valued to new technologies, new products, and new technologies. In particular, they have strong discriminating ability and acceptance ability for new pharmaceutical technologies. Therefore, they are willing to invest in manpower in process improvement and technological innovation. , material resources, financial resources. Most Chinese pharmaceutical companies produce generic drugs. Most of the production processes are imitated by pharmaceutical companies in developed countries. They lack independent core technologies and sufficient R&D personnel. The sensitivity and judgment of new technologies are relatively insufficient. Consistent system, relatively backward or outdated, lacks effective control measures and means of improvement for pollutant emissions generated during the production process, resulting in various pollutions failing to meet increasingly stringent environmental requirements and emission standards.
The huge difference in the long-term monopoly of advanced pharmaceutical production equipment and materials in developed countries
Developed countries not only have advanced pharmaceutical processes but also monopolize key pharmaceutical production equipment and materials. The biopharmaceutical process can be divided into upstream fermentation and downstream separation purification. The downstream separation and purification is an important link between the purity and quality of the drug, the production cost, and the amount of pollution discharged. The key production equipment and materials used downstream, such as chromatography systems, membrane filtration systems and related consumable membranes and chromatographic media, have long been monopolized by developed countries. The price of these key equipment and consumables sold to China is usually not low, causing huge cost pressure on Chinese pharmaceutical companies. Moreover, the delivery period is long, and some equipment and materials are even restricted to export to China. Therefore, due to the pressure of cost and the problem of safe supply, Chinese pharmaceutical companies often choose domestic low-end production equipment and consumables. Although this can reduce production costs, due to low purification efficiency, the overall cost will increase, and the organic use in the production process. Solvents and pure water will increase significantly, and wastewater and waste gas emissions will also increase significantly.
How to crack the environmental circle of China's raw material drug manufacturers?
On the one hand, the government and the public are increasingly demanding and paying more attention to environmental protection. On the one hand, people are increasingly pursuing life and health. As a medicine to protect people's health and life, how to find a green development path, how to Cracking the pollution discharge problem in the production process is a realistic problem that the government and pharmaceutical companies must face today. The government is encouraging the pharmaceutical companies to continue to adopt the negative way of relocation to avoid short-term pressure problems. Or is it like the European pharmaceutical companies to take the initiative to continuously improve the production technology, and to effectively reduce emissions and live in harmony with the local residents, it is worth pondering.
How big is the effect of advanced production processes on reducing emissions? The following is a brief description of antibiotic production.
Antibiotics are very familiar to humans and are the earliest biopharmaceuticals used by humans. They are widely used, so their production is currently the largest of all biopharmaceuticals and one of the most polluting varieties. Like all biopharmaceutical processes, the production of antibiotics is mostly extracted from microbial cultures, which are divided into upstream fermentation and downstream separation and purification processes. The upstream fermentation technology is mainly to increase the target antibiotic content per unit volume of culture fluid, which is a process of growth, “more and betterâ€. Through years of research, the upstream microbial culture technology has been greatly improved, and the existing fermentation yield is ten times higher than the original one, so the upstream fermentation cost is also reduced by a factor of ten. The subsequent downstream separation and purification process requires economical and efficient extraction of the target biopharmaceutical molecules from the complex components of the fermentation by concentration, separation and purification, accompanied by a large amount of waste water and waste. "The sand is all down." Therefore, whether the downstream separation and purification technology is scientific and advanced is the core that restricts biopharmaceutics while increasing production, reducing costs and reducing emissions, and is also a technical bottleneck!
Hold the source of pollution emissions . Downstream separation and purification are not only related to the purity and quality of the drug, but also related to production costs and waste discharge. At this stage, it is often necessary to use a large amount of organic solvents and pure water, and the discharge of wastewater is large. Therefore, in order to reduce the waste discharge of antibiotic manufacturers from the source, it is necessary to take downstream separation and purification technology as a top priority.
The environmental drawbacks of traditional technology need to be resolved. Most of the traditional antibiotic separation and purification technologies in China use the backward technology of the 1950s, and use the simple column to fill the macroporous resin for separation. This macroporous resin has low separation efficiency and poor resolution, and requires a high column bed (2-3 m column height) to achieve the separation of the required dielectric materials. This technique requires a large amount of water and organic solvents, resulting in the inclusion of The solvent wastewater discharge is large. Second, due to the use of a large amount of volatile organic solvents, organic emissions are inevitably caused. Third, due to the poor separation efficiency, some of the target products and impurities cannot be separated effectively and can only be transported as waste to the wastewater treatment plant. These wastes contain a large amount of antibiotics, which may cause secondary pollution to the river ecology if not handled properly.
The perception of manufacturers needs to be strengthened. In recent years, the development of biopharmaceutical separation and purification technology, equipment and materials has made great progress, which has greatly improved the separation and purification efficiency and environmental protection of drugs. But unfortunately, these valuable advances are often only used in high-end biopharmaceuticals such as peptides, insulin, protein antibody drugs, etc., and are not used in the production of low-end antibiotics. On the one hand, it is a cost issue. On the other hand, antibiotic manufacturers are not aware of high-efficiency separation and purification technologies. In addition, the profit margin is relatively low, and they are reluctant to invest in new separation and purification technologies, thus causing the entire antibiotic manufacturer to become A big source of pollution, this is also the inevitable problem of all the antibiotic manufacturers facing huge environmental pressures. If we do not improve the problem of mass emission from the source through separation and purification technology, it will inevitably fall into the environmental cycle of relocation, production stoppage and so on.
Seize the core of advanced technology . The development of modern high-efficiency separation and purification technology, the most important of which is the use of fine separation and purification media and advanced column system, so that the proportion of API and exchange solvent is greatly reduced. First, the degree of refinement of the separation and purification medium is getting higher and higher. The smaller the particle size of the medium, the more uniform the particles, the higher the efficiency of separation and exchange, the smaller the amount of solvent and water used, the higher the product recovery rate, the higher the purity of the target product, that is, the particle size is inversely proportional to the separation efficiency. The smaller the particles, the higher the separation efficiency. Early macroporous separation resins generally have a particle size of 500 microns, and now fine separation fillers are typically below 100 microns, so the separation efficiency of fine chromatography packings is several times higher than that of macroporous resins. Second, the modern column system is more and more automated, the column system is more airtight, and can withstand high pressure, so that the entire separation and purification process can be carried out in a closed system, greatly improving the overall separation and purification production efficiency, solvent It is also used less and minimizes the release of volatile solvents in the air.
Breaking foreign monopoly and realizing the localization of high-efficiency fine separation and purification technology is the golden key to solving the environmental pollution problem of Chinese pharmaceutical enterprises
High-efficiency fine separation and purification medium is widely used in high-end biopharmaceuticals such as antibodies, insulin, peptide drugs, etc. However, the preparation technology of fine separation and purification medium is difficult, and it is monopolized by a few companies in the world. The domestic high-efficiency separation and purification medium has long been basic. Fully dependent on imports, foreign products are not only expensive in domestic sales, but also have a long lead time. Therefore, even high-end biopharmaceutical companies in China are subject to huge cost pressures due to the purchase of foreign imported chromatographic packing. For low-end biopharmaceutical companies with lower production profits, they are even more eager to see. In order to realize the wide application of downstream separation and purification technology, China must realize the localization of high-efficiency separation and purification media. Nano Micro Technology has a mission and is determined to develop a world-leading high-precision bio-separation and purification medium precision preparation technology, which can accurately control the particle size, distribution, pore structure and surface functional groups of the medium. It not only fills the gap in the field of high-performance monodisperse polymer chromatography packing in China, but also breaks through the world-wide problem of large-scale preparation of monodisperse silica gel chromatography packing, creating a Chinese road for the “China Heart†manufacturing of the entire chromatographic technology. The successful industrialization of nano-high-performance chromatography packing has ended the passive situation of Chinese pharmaceutical companies relying on imports for a long time, and the use of this new fine chromatographic packing can effectively reduce the waste discharge during the separation and purification of bio-pharmaceuticals, greatly improving the purity of medicines and Quality not only provides cost-effective and high-performance chromatographic packing for China's high-end biopharmaceuticals to replace imports, but also has good performance, greatly reducing production costs, and enabling advanced separation and purification technologies for low-end biopharmaceutical applications to reduce pollution emissions.
The use of high-efficiency fine separation and purification technology brings multiple benefits. Nano's advanced technology and high-performance products were quickly recognized by European and American biopharmaceutical manufacturers. European pharmaceutical companies that are very conservative and biased against Chinese technology and products have voluntarily abandoned more than ten uses after testing nano-fine chromatographic packing. Chromatographic packing produced by the Japanese company of the world's top 500. In order to fully utilize the performance of nano-fine fillers, European pharmaceutical companies have invested tens of millions of RMB in a fully automated closed-cell column system. The final result is also unexpected. The customer completely replaces 13,000 liters of filler in Japan with only 3000 liters of nano-fine high-performance filler. The filler saving rate is over 70%, which not only greatly reduces the amount of filler used, but also water, The use of solvents and pollution emissions have been reduced by more than half, the product recovery rate has also increased by nearly 10 points, production efficiency has been significantly improved, costs have been greatly reduced, and the cost of investing in new equipment and fillers has been recovered in less than half a year. It is particularly worth mentioning that the increase in drug recovery means that antibiotics that were previously only disposable with waste can be recycled into medicines due to technological improvements, increasing production, reducing costs, and reducing pollution emissions. After adopting the advanced fine separation and purification medium of Nano Micro, this European pharmaceutical company has improved the quality of medicines, reduced waste discharge, reduced production costs, improved market competitiveness, and higher efficiency of the company.
I am very impressed by the successful opening of the European market! It is not only for the first time that Nano-products have broken the influence of foreign monopoly in the international market, but also sighs for the sharp vision and rapid response of pharmaceutical companies in developed countries like Europe to new technologies. This European pharmaceutical company is capable of accepting new technologies. It has a strong sense of environmental protection and embraces new technologies. Even if this new technology originated in China and has not been widely used in China, it certainly brings many benefits to them: it can greatly improve the quality of drugs while solving environmental pressures. In order to effectively enhance the competitiveness of pharmaceutical companies in the market and achieve a win-win situation for enterprises, people, the environment and the market.
To technology and productivity, Chinese pharmaceutical companies can get out of the environmental cycle to achieve green development
"It is necessary to have Jinshan Yinshan, but also green mountains and green mountains." The 19th National Congress pointed out that the establishment of a modern economic system and the construction of a beautiful China. The key to China's real solution to the pollution problem caused by low-end drug production is not to rely on relocation of factories, not to limit production and production, or to stop production due to waste production, but to establish a modern development concept of relying on science and technology to rely on technological progress. Achieve green development. At present, the use of advanced fine separation and purification technology to improve efficiency, reduce costs and reduce emissions is a smart solution to solve the pollution emissions of biopharmaceutical enterprises from the source. The emergence of nano-products has ended the history of China's inability to produce high-performance separation and purification media, ending the long history of import monopoly by foreign countries, and pioneering the development of China's independent intellectual property high-tech products to help national industry, which is expected to be rooted. End the “blacklist†history of high-pollution and high-emissions of traditional pharmaceutical companies, promote the upgrading of industries, and realize the effective conversion of new and old kinetic energy.
In the international market, Nawei's products have been highly recognized by international companies due to their high-tech content and high application performance. The market share and utilization rate have been rising year after year, the technology promotion is smooth, and the market prospect is broad. But unfortunately, due to the weak sense of acceptance of new technologies by domestic enterprises, and the conservative nature of the pharmaceutical industry, coupled with the low profit of the production of antibiotic manufacturers, the unwillingness or inability to invest in new equipment and new processes, etc. Although Micro can develop and produce international top products, but it does not have the greatest benefit to domestic pharmaceutical companies, this is the most painful thing for Nawei as a national industrial enterprise, and it is also the determination of Nawei to make the greatest efforts to do its utmost. Things that must be done and must be done.
Because, let Chinese companies be like European pharmaceutical companies, even if the factory in the city center can live in peace with the citizens, is the mission of Nano!
Acknowledgement: I sincerely thank Jiang Qinghong, a classmate of Peking University, for doing a lot of work in the process of information collection, research and review, revision and editing.
Introduction to Dr. Jiang Biwang, a national expert on thousands of people
He graduated from the Chemistry Department of Peking University with a Ph.D. degree from the State University of New York at Binghamton. He was a postdoctoral researcher at the University of California at Berkeley and a Senior Scientist at Rohm and Haas. In 2006, he returned to China to create nanometer materials at the Peking University Shenzhen Graduate School. The research center is selected into the Shenzhen Key Laboratory and the Guangdong Provincial Key Laboratory. In 2007, Suzhou Nawei Technology Co., Ltd. () was established, specializing in the industrialization of advanced nanometer microsphere materials. It has created the world's leading precision preparation technology for monodisperse chromatography packing materials and successfully industrialized it. It has become the only company in the world that can produce monodisperse silica gel chromatography packings on a large scale. It has successfully exported to advanced pharmaceutical companies such as Europe, America, Japan and Korea, breaking the long-term single in China. The situation of importing high performance chromatography packing. In order to improve the overall technical level of separation and purification of biopharmaceuticals in China, the establishment of the Pharmaceutical Separation and Purification Industry Alliance was launched, and the National Pharmaceutical Separation and Purification Technology Forum was held for four consecutive years. He was awarded the Entrepreneurship Innovation Talents of the Ministry of Science and Technology, the Top Ten Charm and Technology Persons of Suzhou City, and the Entrepreneurial Innovation Talents of Jiangsu Province; He was awarded the China Overseas Chinese Innovation Contribution Award and the Jiangsu May 1st Labor Medal. He has published more than 30 articles and applied for more than 40 invention patents at home and abroad.
Four-wired Nurse Call System
ETR Four-Wired Nurse Call System is designed for providing the communication between patients in wards and medical personnel in nurses offices in case of any peculiar conditions in hospitals,With cast-into-once deluxe plastic master telephone hosing, innovative summary fixed mode, complete information electronic summary and audio number reporting system.
Four-Wired Nurse Call System,Wireless Nurse Call System,Hospital Nurse Call Equipment,Hospital Nurse Call Station System
Hunan Eter Medical Co., Ltd. , https://www.eter-tech.com