Recovery of Active Pharmaceutical Ingredients from Unused Solid Dosage-Form Drugs

Dhanang Edy Pratama; Wen-Chen Hsieh; Ahmed Elmaamoun; Hung Lin Lee; Tu Lee

doi:10.1021/acsomega.0c03878

Recovery of Active Pharmaceutical Ingredients from Unused Solid Dosage-Form Drugs

ACS Omega. 2020 Nov 6;5(45):29147-29157. doi: 10.1021/acsomega.0c03878. eCollection 2020 Nov 17.

Authors

Dhanang Edy Pratama¹, Wen-Chen Hsieh¹, Ahmed Elmaamoun², Hung Lin Lee¹, Tu Lee¹

Affiliations

¹ Department of Chemical and Materials Engineering, National Central University, 300 Zhongda Road, Zhongli District, Taoyuan City 32001, Taiwan, Republic of China.
² International Master Program in Applied Material Science, National Central University, 300 Zhongda Road, Zhongli District, Taoyuan City 32001, Taiwan, Republic of China.

Abstract

The concept of drug recycle by recovering active pharmaceutical ingredients (APIs) from unused tablets and capsules was demonstrated using acetaminophen, tetracycline HCl, and (R,S)-(±)-ibuprofen as case examples. The recovery process comprised three core unit operations: solid-liquid extraction, filtration, and crystallization. Recovery yields of 58.7 wt %, 73.1 wt %, and 67.6 wt % for acetaminophen, tetracycline HCl, and (R,S)-(±)-ibuprofen were achieved, respectively. More importantly, all of the APIs were of high purity based on high-performance liquid chromatography assay. The crystal forms of the recovered APIs were in conformity with the standards.