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A Brief HistoryDuring the late 1970s, there was only one U.S. company offering supercritical fluid development services to industry; that company's emphasis was on the application of supercritical fluids to waste remediation and energy reduction, developing extraction processes to replace distillation or to reduce the hazards of toxic wastes. At this same time, there were no similar European or Asian companies developing or offering supercritical fluid based processes; however, a government laboratory, the Max Planck Institute for Coal Research in Germany (FRG), had developed substantial supercritical fluids expertise in foods, flavors, and beverages, and the institute was licensing extraction technology to German industry. A coffee decaffeination plant (in Bremen) and two hops extraction plants (Munchmunster and Wolnzach) came on stream in the late 70s and early 80s utilizing the Max Planck Institute-developed supercritical CO2 extraction processes. Recognizing that supercritical fluid processing offered potential advantages to industrial sectors other than foods processing and hazardous wastes remediation, Val Krukonis founded Phasex Corporation in January, 1981, to apply supercritical fluids to difficult-to-solve extraction and purification problems with emphasis initially (and still) directed to the polymers, specialty and fine chemicals, natural products, and pharmaceuticals industries. The company's initial laboratory was housed in 1,000 sq. ft. of leased space in an 1830s era textile mill in Nashua, NH. Business Week and Chemical & Engineering News articles from mid 1981 describe the three or four major supercritical fluid players of the early 80's, one in Germany, three in the US. It is of interest to point out that the production of ultrafine particles that was described by Phasex in the C&E News feature report has today captured serious attention in the pharmaceuticals industry. Particle comminution processes, such as jet milling and wet grinding, suffer from either a minimum size limitation or from grinding media contamination; waxy pharma compounds with MPs of 60°C or less are especially difficult to jet mill. Supercritical fluid processing can form narrow particle size distributions in narrow ranges, from 100nm to 5microns, without introducing contamination, and supercritical fluids are especially effective with the waxy pharma compounds. Phasex invented both particle formation processes currently in advanced development at many pharmaceuticals companies and in GMP production at several others. One particle formation process exploits the solvent properties of supercritical fluids, the other process, their anti-solvent attributes. (Several Phasex publications describe these processes and the results achievable with supercritical fluids and are listed in Papers & Patents). During the first eight years of the company's operation cash flow was generated primarily from industrial and government R&D programs. Phasex grew by emphasizing its technological expertise and wide ranging interests and the company's acquired knowledge base obtained from government SBIR programs. In 1985, the company moved from Nashua to larger quarters in another textile mill building (1900s era) in Lawrence, MA, where it occupies 12,000 sq. ft. of renovated space. In 1989, Phasex installed a small pilot plant for carrying out process optimization studies to extend laboratory developments to large scale. A few years later the plant was expanded to toll processing scale by adding two large extraction vessels and a recycle compressor. The research laboratories have also been expanded; currently the R&D systems comprise a half dozen extraction/recrystallization modules, optical and laser doppler particle size measurement equipment, HPLC, and micro gravimetric analytical capabilities. The tolling plant processes multi-ton quantities of solid and liquid feedstocks. A new 5X scale plant is being constructed, and the combined production output positions Phasex as the largest specialty materials toll processor in the U.S.
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