Manufacturing technology

New medicine reactor to reduce waste

With a new reactor design, Lundbeck is moving towards more robust medicine production with less waste.

Woman in lab coat sitting by a reactor in a lab. Photo: Ditte Valente
Pelin Çaglayan is working in her PhD to develop a jet loop reactor—a type of continuous reactor—that can provide a safer and more efficient production of pharmaceuticals. Photo: Ditte Valente

Tuesday 24 June 2025

Magnus Stenaa Jensen

Fill, mix, react, empty, clean, repeat. This is how the pharmaceutical industry has been producing for centuries—including at Lundbeck's plant in Lumsås, Denmark, where active pharmaceutical ingredients (the substances that have an effect in the body) are manufactured in large batch reactors. The method is reliable, but time-consuming and vulnerable. If something goes wrong, the production must be discarded. So Lundbeck has been collaborating with DTU Chemical Engineering since 2008 to develop continuous reactors that can produce the medicine in a constant flow. 

“If something goes wrong, with batch production we risk having to discard 100 kilos. In certain cases, you can monitor it closely and cross your fingers that everything runs smoothly. But with continuous production, we detect errors much earlier, so we can stop production, correct the error, and re-start, so we only have to discard a few litres,” says Tommy Skovby, Project Director at Lundbeck Lumsås. 

For example, the significantly smaller size of continuous reactors facilitates detecting errors in the reaction process. Continuous reactors currently account for 5-10 per cent of the production in Lumsås. The technology is complex, and increased conversion requires both major investments and strict safety considerations. But even though the transition takes time, the collaboration creates valuable opportunities for PhD students and research at DTU Chemical Engineering. 

“The collaboration with Lundbeck allows our students to be inspired by real-life problems that we incorporate into our study programmes and research. This gives us a unique opportunity to test our research in an industrial setting,” says Kim Dam-Johansen, Professor and Head of DTU Chemical Engineering.  

Facts

Batch versus continuous

Understand the differences between the two approaches which each have their benefits and disadvantages.

Continuous reactor

  • Running non-stop.
  • Raw materials are added continuously, and the final product is removed continuously. 
  • Provides less waste, better energy consumption, and more stable production.
  • Difficult to scale up in the pharmaceutical industry due to strict regulations, high investment costs, and the need for precise process control.

Batch reactor

  • Operates in batches—filled, reacts, emptied, and cleaned before next batch.
  • Still widely used in the pharmaceutical industry, but creates more waste and requires more energy.

Project becoming reality

At DTU Lyngby Campus, Pelin Çaglayan is working on a jet loop reactor—a type of continuous reactor. Through her PhD project, she is developing a process design for the continuous reactor with the aim of using the design on a large scale at the Lumsås plant.  

Hydrogen is fed through pipes into a reactor tank, where it is mixed with substrates (molecules that react chemically) and solvents. A catalyst initiates a chemical reaction that changes the structure of the molecules. Meanwhile, a pump creates a loop effect that keeps the liquid in constant motion, enabling the reaction to proceed in a continuous flow. 

It was an advertisement offering the opportunity to develop a design with the potential to directly benefit the industry that prompted Pelin Çaglayan to make the move from Türkiye to Denmark to work on the design. 

“The collaboration with Lundbeck means that I can make my project a reality. If we succeed in implementing a new reactor design in Lumsås, and if it proves effective, it could potentially be implemented widely in the pharmaceutical industry,” says Pelin Çaglayan. 

Safety essential

The jet loop reactor has an 11-litre tank, which means that the safety risk is much lower than with batch reactors. Because the reactor runs continuously, there is no loss in production volume—despite the size of the reactor. 

“The reactions are notoriously known to pose a safety risk. If you run them in our 1,000-litre tanks and something goes wrong, it’s explosive. This requires us to manage the reaction in a very controlled manner, and we’re devoting considerable resources to this,” says Tommy Skovby.

Although Pelin Çaglayan’s reactor can provide a safer and more efficient production, there are also challenges in implementing the design in Lumsås. One of her biggest headaches is controlling the speed of the reactor pump so it maintains a constant flow while mixing the ingredients correctly. If successful, her reactor will require far less energy than the existing reactors in Lumsås. 

Pelin Çaglayan is expected to complete her PhD in June 2026.

Contact

Kim Dam-Johansen

Kim Dam-Johansen Professor, Head of Department Department of Chemical and Biochemical Engineering Mobile: +45 20142527

Pelin Çaglayan

Pelin Çaglayan PhD Student Department of Chemical and Biochemical Engineering