In the pharmaceutical industry, medicinal chemists synthesize chemical compounds on the milligram scale to develop active pharmaceutical ingredients that can be safely administered to patients. Process chemists take their work and scale it up so that it can be tested and produced in large quantities for commercial production.
The primary role of a process chemist is to identify impurities and troubleshoot problems that might not have been visible when small quantities were produced in the lab. They are also charged with determining the cost-effectiveness and safety of synthetic routes. Most process chemists work primarily in laboratory settings, but many also spend time in manufacturing plants where their work is implemented.
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