Bench scale to large scale

When US fluorochemicals manufacturer Halocarbon suggested a visit to its newly expanded facility in Augusta, Graham Lampard jumped at the chance

If you are of a certain persuasion, Augusta, Georgia, can only mean one thing - golf, and the US Masters. However, the Augusta Golf Club is so exclusive that there isn't even a waiting list, it is strictly 'by invitation' only.So it was straight down to the purpose of the visit: to see Halocarbon Products' 100-acre expanded manufacturing facility in North Augusta, located just across the State border, on the other side of the Savannah river, in South Carolina.

One of the world's leading producers of speciality fluorochemicals, Halocarbon is privately held by the Ehrenfeld family and has annual sales in the 10s of millions of dollars. Peter Murin, the company's chief operating officer, said the company concentrates on three business units: inert lubricants, inhalation anaesthetics and fluorochemicals.

To accommodate additional custom manufacturing capabilities, the company has brought on-line a new 2000m² 'semi works plant' (SWP), which will produce gases, liquids or solids both at high and low temperatures and at high and low pressures. Halocarbon is the world's first large-scale producer of trifluoroacetic acid and trifluoroethanol, the world's first in the production of commercial quantities of CFC substitutes and the first US producer of fluorinated anaesthetics.

built-in flexibility

All this can be achieved while maintaining flexibility. There is a Class I, Division I area for flammable liquid storage and dispensing, and the plant is rated for general purpose or Class I, Division II flammables. The new facility is controlled by a state-of-the-art distributed control system with local and remote control capabilities.

In addition, the plant is tied into the existing utility network of Halocarbon's manufacturing plant. The facility is staffed around the clock to ensure productivity and safety and includes quality control and research groups.

'The Siemens control system affords us the flexibility to produce halogenated new compounds in ton quantities through to tens-of-ton quantities,' Barry Jones, the company's technical director, explained. 'Its implementation is, I think, proof of Halocarbon's "big company" thinking; it means we can provide complete data analysis on compounds from bench-scale through to multi-ton quantities, something that is important when the FDA becomes involved.'

Halocarbon expects to carry out the following types of reactions at the semi works facility: fluorination, chlorination, bromination, oxidation, hydrogenation, esterification, amidation/amination and alkylation.

However, this doesn't mean the company wants to be a catalogue house: 'For the past 50 years or so we have had firm product lines and focused on large volume products, such as the anaesthetics Fluroxene, Halothane, Isofluorane, and its latest product Sevoflurane.

'However, in the 90s, we saw a move to fluorochemicals as 'designer' ccompounds.' The company has led the way with diverse fluorine-based products for API production in the drug industry through to photoresists for the semi-conductor industry.

Also good to see was that Halocarbon is dedicated to providing its employees, as well as its neighbours, with the safest possible environment. At its facility, it maintains an excellent safety and environmental record by aggressively training all employees.

In the local community, Halocarbon is proactive, again something that can't be said of many chemical companies, and it actively participates in Community Awareness and Emergency Response (CAER) programmes. Its environmental and health and safety director, Ken McDowell, is also a local politician.

designed for safety

The new plant has been designed in-house with safety in mind. It has extensive safety monitoring and a good record. As McDowell pointed out: 'Whenever we have been FDA inspected there have been few problems; indeed in the last two inspections, no citations and form 483s have been issued.' However, he did admit that after one OHSA inspection the company had to revise 'our facial hair policy!'

In summary, coo Murin said that although there were competitive challenges from China and India and regulatory issues to be faced, such as the EU's REACH proposals, he felt Halocarbon was 'a lean and smart' organisation that could deal with these because 'we have big company sophistication with small company responsiveness.'

The SWP seems to crystallise that philosophy and, with its opening, Halocarbon's next 50 years look set to be as exciting as its last 50.