The flavor & fragrance industry uses phase-transfer catalysis extensively and all major F&F companies have PTC patents. Two of the top three F&F companies have conducted the 2-day PTC course in-house taught by PTC Organics.
Some find this surprising since the decomposition products of quaternary ammonium phase-transfer catalysts are tertiary amines that have characteristic amine odors that could potentially contaminate odor-sensitive products. You can use PTC with flavors and fragrances because fractional distillation used in the F&F industry is effective for separating potential residual amines from fractionated products streams.
Selected examples of the use of PTC in the flavor and fragrance industry with fractional distillation are shown in the following US patents: 8,809,256, 7,141,699, 6,252,120, 5,288,701, 5,288,702 (funny that two consecutively numbered patents use PTC for F&F), 5,066,640, 4,582,634, 4,490,284, 4,430,354, 4,173,543.
If you have questions about achieving low-cost high-performance PTC applications for your company, please send your inquiry to Marc Halpern of PTC Organics to explore integrating PTC Organics highly specialized expertise in industrial phase-transfer catalysis to improve process performance and process R&D efficiency.
About Marc Halpern
Dr. Halpern is founder and president of PTC Organics, Inc., the only company dedicated exclusively to developing low-cost high-performance green chemistry processes for the manufacture of organic chemicals using Phase Transfer Catalysis. Dr. Halpern has innovated PTC breakthroughs for pharmaceuticals, agrochemicals, petrochemicals, monomers, polymers, flavors & fragrances, dyes & pigments and solvents. Dr. Halpern has provided PTC services on-site at more than 260 industrial process R&D departments in 37 countries and has helped chemical companies save > $200 million. Dr. Halpern co-authored five books including the best-selling “Phase-Transfer Catalysis: Fundamentals, Applications and Industrial Perspectives” and has presented the 2-day course “Practical Phase-Transfer Catalysis” at 50 locations in the US, Europe and Asia.
Dr. Halpern founded the journal “Industrial Phase-Transfer Catalysis” and “The PTC Tip of the Month” enjoyed by 2,100 qualified subscribers, now beyond 130 issues. In 2014, Dr. Halpern is celebrating his 30th year in the chemical industry, including serving as a process chemist at Dow Chemical, a supervisor of process chemistry at ICI, Director of R&D at Sybron Chemicals and founder and president of PTC Organics Inc. (15 years) and PTC Communications Inc. (20 years). Dr. Halpern also co-founded PTC Interface Inc. in 1989 and PTC Value Recovery Inc. in 1999. His academic breakthroughs include the PTC pKa Guidelines, the q-value for quat accessibility and he has achieved industrial PTC breakthroughs for a dozen strong base reactions as well as esterifications, transesterifications, epoxidations and chloromethylations plus contributed to more than 100 other industrial PTC process development projects.
Dr. Halpern has dedicated his adult life to his family and to phase-transfer catalysis (in that order!).
