The chemistry of fine organic intermediates and products shows an enormous diversity. But in reality, the number of operations/processes used remains reasonably small. These include charging/discharging of reactants and solvents, inertisation, reactions, crystallisations, phase separations, filtrations, distillation, product washing. In many cases cooling, heating, or the application of vacuum or pressure is necessary. The unavoidable waste streams are treated in recovery/abatement systems or disposed of as waste. The key environmental issues of the OFC sector are emissions of volatile organic compounds, waste waters with potential for high loads of non-degradable organic compounds, relatively large quantities of spent.
