Optimising reaction performance in the pharmaceutical industry by monitoring with NMR

Quality assurance and process understanding are assuming increasing importance in the production of Active Pharmaceutical Ingredients (APIs). NMR has the potential to report on physical processes, quantities, structures, and speciation as chemical reactions progress. Following the progression of chemical reactions by placing the sample in an NMR tube, one can perform a large number of useful studies that provide chemical and mechanistic insight. But this simple approach can have limitations, and we have therefore constructed an apparatus comprising a laboratory reactor coupled with an NMR flow cell. The reactor duplicates the exact reaction conditions that will apply with large-scale production. This reaction mixture is sampled and pumped to a high-resolution NMR flow cell where the spectrum is recorded through the course of the reaction. We demonstrate the utility of reaction monitoring using NMR both for simple cases where tubes can be used, and describe the design of the on-flow apparatus and highlight its utility with an example.