Chirality in Industry: The Commercial Manufacture and Applications of Optically Active Compounds

The production of optically active intermediates and products as pure enantiomers is a topic of ever-increasing importance to the chemical industry. The economic incentives of improved cost efficiency and enhanced biological activity, together with new regulatory pressures have, in the last decade, brought about a dramatic increase in the number and scope of industrial processes. Chirality in Industry provides an overview of the production of optically active compounds on a large scale wholly from an industrial perspective. The volume includes example of each of the available process options, from classical resolution procedures to asymmetric syntheses with traditional chemical catalysts and enzyme-based technologies. An extended opening chapter, which systematically considers these options and relates them to a series of important targets, is followed by a series of more detailed case histories by industrial authors summarizing the processes which underpin the large-scale production of several important optically pure intermediates. While Chirality in Industry should prove of particular interest to chemists who are professionally involved in the production of pure enantiomers on a practical scale, it is hoped that students and researchers involved in a more academic pursuit of optical activity will also benefit from some of the facets of large scale thinking. An economic solution is more likely to be a simple, elegant solution.