- von Leah
Today the group went to Merck which is a company whose headquarters are in Darmstadt. They are a science and technology company which focuses in Life Science, Performance
Materials and Health Care. The company's motto is “Science is at the heart of everything we do. It drives the discoveries we make and the technologies we create.”
Next, we locked up our belongings and listening to a short introduction about what the company does (with a lot of business background) and made our way to the corporate museum. This museum gives the background into the oldest pharmaceutical company in the world since it was founded in 1668. Within there was raw opium, the boxes and vials they put all of the pure drugs into, books with contact information or general pharma outlines as well as older versions of modern technology. The below drei (3) pictures the leftmost picture shows an old reactor, the middle is a microscope from 1907 and the rightmost picture is a bunch of different samples on glass microscope plates.
After the museum we split into drei Gruppen to go on drei different tours of behind the
scenes. The group I was in went to the laboratory first, where we learned there are research and development areas for all three main departments. The lab we were shown talked about how the use of HF and SO4 were used to fluoronate or defluoronate reactions as well as other gases and catalyst are used. Catalyst are used in order to stimulate the reaction rate. We were also told that in order to go into these locked up ‘bunkers’ (air tight rooms that are closed with a large steel door and have some type of insulated non porous walls) you need to wear a mask and specific sensors in order to determine if it is safe to enter the room. In some cases you are required to wear an air tight suit that gets cool air filtered through it, so one can work in the ‘bunker’ with these gases for up to an hour without overheating or being exposed to the toxic environment.
The second tour was of the pilot lab. This is a space where you scale up an experiment from a research and development standpoint to full on production. Within the facility there were
batch reactors ranging from 60-2,500 liters which were connected to a multitude of tubing that help heat up, cool down and add materials to the reaction. We got to see a reaction taking place but unfortunately when I asked what they were producing I was unable to hear or understand what he was saying due to the language differences in technical terms and the loudness of the room we were occupying. There was also a centrifuge displayed that still uses the old method of removing the material where someone puts on all the safety equipment (gloves, eyewear, mask, etc.) and takes a small hand shovel which kind of resembles the ones used on beaches by children and scoops out the raw solid materials and places it into a stainless steel container for transportation.
The third and final tour was of another laboratory that uses continuous reactions to complete the process. The first step was to take a plate with the desired size and number of metal coils that resembled springs and place it into bed. This bed while on had two raw materials running through it which created a chemical reaction. These coils were also simultaneously heated or cooled with the use of oil. In another room we were able to see the different separation methods they used which are specific to projects. There were membrane separations, which was more of a biological membrane with pores throughout to help move or trap the desired product and the undesired does the opposite. There was distillation columns, extraction and adsorption. All of these were completed in the liquid or gas phase since the solid phase creates some issues with clogging the small pores the material is transferred through. Within this last tour, we found out that the equipment the chemical engineers/chemists use to complete their experiments are designed, manufactured and put together by the mechanical engineers excluding the larger regulated equipment needed.
Overall, the tour gave a great in depth insight into what the company does and what the
work environment is like. We also had the opportunity to eat lunch with the people who lead the tours, during which I had the ability to ask all the questions I had about the company and
working there, since Merck does what I am most interested in going into.
Am Januar 14 sind wir zur Firma Merck in Darmstadt gereist. Merck ist eine Firma, die mit Wissenschaft und Technologie arbeiten. Das Unternehmen wurde 1668 gegründet. Merck hat mehr als 50.000 Angestellten. Ein Mann hat eine kurze Präsentation über Merck präsentiert, mit interessanten Fakten über das Unternehmen. Dann sind wir an drei Touren gegangen. Auf den Touren haben wir Laboren mit vielen Chemikalien gesehen. Ein Labor hat eine Zentrifuge und einen Autoklav gehabt. Wir haben auch Schutzbrillen und Schutzhelme getragen. Merck ist interessant, weil sie sich für die Mitarbeiter des Unternehmens und für technologische Verbesserungen interessieren und nicht für Geld oder Ruhm. Merck will die Welt verbessern. Merck ist sehr cool!
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