Eco-Designing Pharmaceutical Supply Chains: A Process Engineering Approach to Life Cycle Inventory Generation

The environmental impacts of pharmaceutical production underscore the need for comprehensive life cycle assessments (LCAs). Offshoring manufacturing, a common cost-saving strategy in the pharmaceutical industry, increases supply chain complexity and reliance on countries like India and China for active pharmaceutical ingredients (APIs). The COVID-19 pandemic exposed Europe�s vulnerability to global crises, prompting initiatives such as the French government�s re-industrialization plan to relocate the production of fifty critical drugs. Paracetamol production has been prioritized, with recent shortages highlighting the urgency to address supply chain risks while considering environmental impacts. This study uses process engineering to generate life cycle inventory (LCI) data for paracetamol production, offering an eco-design perspective. Aspen Plus was employed to model the API manufacturing process, integrating mass and energy balances to address the scarcity of LCI data. The results highlight significant differences in emissions between India and France. For 1 kg of API, India�s emissions are 0.0826 kg CO2 eq for electricity and 1.3845 kg CO2 eq for heat from steam, compared to France�s significantly lower values of 0.005228 kg CO2 eq and 1.1828 kg CO2 eq, respectively. These differences emphasize the environmental benefits of relocating production to regions with cleaner energy sources. The study demonstrates the value of process modeling for generating robust LCI data, enabling detailed LCAs to support eco-design in pharmaceutical manufacturing. This approach can be extended to other chemicals, facilitating sustainable decision-making in the sector's re-industrialization.