Expert Interview : 6 questions to our Fine Chemicals R&D manager
We asked 6 questions to our Fine Chemicals R&D manager, Pierre-Antoine Bonnardel. Pierre-Antoine manages a chemical development team in the Seqens’Lab, and he explains how his team works on custom projects and shares insights on two major customized solutions
Can you tell us about your role within the R&D team and the projects that have particularly marked your career?
I am in charge, within the Seqens’ Lab in Porcheville near Paris, of a chemical development team that specifically handles projects for the Fine Chemicals activity of the Advanced Specialties Business Unit of SEQENS. I therefore manage the team and also work in the laboratory as an R&D Project Manager, just like my other colleagues. The vast majority of the projects we handle involve the synthesis of small organic molecules or polymers. However, among the projects that particularly stood out to me, two were somewhat outside the scope of our usual work.
The first, which was the result of several projects, involved the synthesis of silica aerogels for thermal insulation applications in construction and aerospace. These studies began in the lab as part of collaborative projects with university laboratories and other industrial partners, funded by the French National Research Agency (ANR) and the European Commission on so-called super insulating materials. At the time, it led to the creation of a subsidiary of PCAS, the start-up Enersens. Beyond the specific chemistry on silanes leading to the production of a nanostructured silica material, this project allowed me to discover the workings of a start-up-like entity with a small team, where things only move forward by being proactive and highly multidisciplinary, and not only on the scientific side.
The second atypical project that stood out to me involved developing coatings for luxury packaging, mainly perfume bottles. This consisted of either applying the color to the bottles as they exited the furnace, before cooling, using a technique known as thermal luster where a solution containing carefully selected organometallic compound precursors is sprayed onto the bottle at 600°C-800°C to generate a metal oxide layer on the glass surface, or depositing a sol-gel solution containing pigments or dyes via spin coating at room temperature.
The most recent noteworthy project follows a more traditional development model and involves a three-step synthesis of a small organic molecule followed by its polymerization to produce one of the components of an electrolyte for batteries. The key points of this project are its commercial stakes and the need to develop two processes — one in batch mode and another in continuous flow chemistry — to ensure long-term production of the required quantities of polymer for the application.
Can you share a recent example where your customization service helped solve a complex problem for a client?
It wasn’t a complex problem for the client per se, but rather an environmental and economic issue for the project: during a recent development, a client approached us with a 4-step process developed at lab scale, in which the total amount of solvent used exceeded 50 volumes of solvent per kilogram of isolated product. Specifically, in the final step, 1 kg of finished product was isolated by precipitation using 30 volumes of solvent. Since the final product was thermally stable enough, we were able to test and validate spray drying of the reaction mixture in the lab. The product obtained this way was also validated by the client through application tests and allowed us to save 30 volumes of solvent — as many volumes of effluents that would have otherwise needed treatment under the client’s original process.
How does collaboration with your R&D team work on customized projects?
The R&D of the Advanced Specialties Business Unit is part of a broader whole whose main objectives are to best meet clients’ needs by optimizing time-to-market and increasing their industrial manufacturing capacities. During process scale-up, the R&D team focuses on a tailored approach based on the processes and their optimization possibilities, leveraging a wide range of technologies available at Seqens’ Lab and across the group’s various industrial sites.
The various optimizations made during this R&D phase are subjected to robustness studies before industrial transfer and play a full role in enhancing clients’ processes.
Can you describe the collaboration process between your R&D team and clients when developing customized solutions?
We work in project mode with all the relevant departments (raw material procurement, quality assurance, HSE, sales teams, Pilot, Production, R&D) gathered around a Project Manager and collaborate with the client through regular exchanges covering technical, timeline, and economic aspects.
Often in fine chemicals projects, the client uses chemical products, knows their synthesis at the lab scale, but doesn’t necessarily have the expertise related to industrial production constraints (HSE, process safety, equipment, etc.). So we frequently modify and optimize processes to make them implementable on our industrial equipment — when the client agrees to this approach.
For example, a client once proposed a five-step organic synthesis with no real purification of the intermediates or the final product, which were isolated by solvent concentration. We suggested the client test the synthesis of the first four steps in a single solvent, without isolating intermediates, and perform a purification step on the final product by precipitating it in a non-solvent. With this modified process, we were able to increase product purity and also improve the overall reaction yield.
What are your areas of expertise in the technologies and chemistries used in your customization service?
The Seqens’Lab positions itself as a key driver of success for the projects we handle, thanks to the wide array of synthesis and characterization laboratory equipment we have access to, as well as the teams’ expertise in process scale-up.
Since each project has its own specificities and challenges, the agility and know-how of our teams of chemists and analysts in adapting to clients’ needs allow us to optimize the various technical aspects.
Our teams’ main areas of expertise involve identifying efficiency levers to reduce costs, improve quality, and minimize the environmental impact of processes. This optimization mindset, combined with a full range of lab equipment — including various characterization, filtration, drying, and chemical synthesis techniques in batch or continuous mode — enables us to quickly translate ideas into concrete industrial-scale solutions and offer our clients a significant advantage in bringing their products to market.
Our on-site access to a kilolab also allows our clients to quickly obtain larger quantities of testable products prepared using pre-industrial processes, and allows us to further refine our optimizations before scaling up.
How does your company integrate environmental and sustainability concerns into its R&D and customization projects?
For several years now, CSR (Corporate Social Responsibility) performance of processes has been at the heart of the developments carried out by the SEQENS R&D teams. In collaboration with the group’s Procurement department, social, human rights, ethical, and environmental concerns are considered from the start of each project, and CSR performance is systematically assessed during the transition to Pilot scale and regularly evaluated throughout the project lifecycle.
custom-finechem@seqens.com