Circularity and sustainability in volatile anaesthetics

Driving sustainability in medicines manufacturing
Anaesthetic nurse and patient

Circularity and sustainability in volatile anaesthetics

Driving sustainability in medicines manufacturing
Title: Circularity and sustainability in volatile anaesthetics 
Funded by:
Dates: 1st November 2025 鈥 31st October 2027 
Project partners:  (project lead) ,麻豆传媒映画, , , ,
麻豆传媒映画 staff: Dr Lee Durndell (PI), Dr Vannia Dos Santos Durndell, Aman Sharma
 
A 拢3.6 million Innovate UK Sustainable Medicines Manufacturing Grand Challenge project is bringing together industry, the NHS, academia, research technology and specialist partners to pioneer a circular model for volatile anaesthetic medicines.
 

Led by SageTech Medical, the project, Circularity and sustainability in volatile anaesthetics, aims to transform the management of anaesthetic gases such as sevoflurane, isoflurane and desflurane after use in operating theatres. These are essential medicines, yet most of each administered dose is exhaled unchanged and is commonly removed from hospitals as waste gas.
The project will develop and demonstrate a circular pathway in which exhaled volatile anaesthetics are captured at the point of clinical use, recovered from capture media, purified through re-manufacturing processes, and returned to the market for reuse. This approach has the potential to reduce reliance on energy-intensive virgin manufacture, lower emissions from operating theatres, reduce waste, and support the UK鈥檚 leadership in sustainable medicines manufacturing.

Female doctor wearing surgical clothing anaesthetising patient in operating theatre
The consortium brings together SageTech Medical鈥檚 anaesthetic capture and recovery technology with expertise from the Centre for Process Innovation, the Manufacturing Technology Centre, Royal Devon University Healthcare NHS Foundation Trust, the 麻豆传媒映画, and other clinical, regulatory, sustainability and delivery partners. 
Together, the partners will address the full pathway from hospital deployment and clinical workflows through to manufacturing scale-up, regulatory evidence, lifecycle assessment, software traceability and end-of-life materials valorisation.
 

Project objectives

The project will focus on establishing a scalable circular economy for volatile anaesthetic medicines through the following objectives:
  • Capture exhaled anaesthetic gases in clinical settings to prevent valuable fluorinated medicines from being lost as waste gases from operating theatres. 
  • Develop the next generation of SageTech鈥檚 SID-Solutions technology, designed to operate without reliance on conventional anaesthetic gas scavenging systems. 
  • Scale up recovery and purification processes so that captured volatile anaesthetics can be separated, concentrated and re-manufactured efficiently, with low process losses and a pathway back to market.
  • Support regulatory approval and new standards for recovered volatile anaesthetics, including evidence to inform a new pharmacopoeia monograph for recycled anaesthetic medicines.
  • Automate and digitise the circular supply chain by creating software systems to track canisters, recovery processes, sustainability data, hazardous-waste compliance, carbon accounting, and regulatory requirements.
  • Demonstrate the technology in real clinical and operational environments, working with NHS and clinical partners to test, validate and de-risk the pathway from theatre capture to re-manufacture.
  • Quantify the environmental and economic case, using lifecycle assessment and operational data to compare circular volatile anaesthetic recovery with conventional manufacture and waste-gas venting.
  • Reduce secondary waste from the capture process by investigating how spent activated carbon can be regenerated, reused, repurposed, or converted into higher-value materials.

 
Turning anaesthetic emissions from operating theatres into recoverable medicines and reusable resources

What makes this project especially powerful is its whole-system approach. It brings together clinical practice, medical device innovation, process engineering, regulation, lifecycle assessment, digital traceability and materials science. That is exactly what is needed if sustainable medicines manufacturing is to move from a promising concept to real-world adoption.

Lee DurndellDr Lee Durndell
Associate Professor in Clean Energy Transitions

 

Why does it matter?

Volatile anaesthetic agents, such as sevoflurane, isoflurane and desflurane, are widely used in surgery and remain essential to modern healthcare. However, they also pose major environmental and manufacturing challenges. 
Only a small proportion of each administered dose is metabolised by the patient, so most is exhaled unchanged. 
To protect operating theatre staff, hospitals use anaesthetic gas scavenging systems to remove these gases from the clinical environment. In many cases, this means hospitals ultimately vent valuable fluorinated medicines as waste gases from buildings. 


This creates two linked problems:
  • volatile anaesthetics are potent greenhouse gases that contribute to healthcare's carbon footprint;
  • the continued manufacture of virgin anaesthetic agents carries a significant hidden footprint, including high energy demand, fluorinated chemical feedstocks and product losses during synthesis.
At the same time, conventional theatre infrastructure can be energy-intensive and expensive to install, operate and maintain. Any move towards capture and recovery must therefore be clinically practical, financially viable, regulatory compliant and supported by strong evidence on safety, sustainability and performance. The challenge is not simply to capture anaesthetic gases, but to create a complete circular system that can work across hospitals, manufacturers, regulators and supply chains.

 
The project addresses this challenge by building and demonstrating a circular medicines manufacturing pathway for volatile anaesthetics. SageTech Medical鈥檚 SID-Solutions technology captures exhaled anaesthetic gases from operating theatres using SID-Can filters. Instead of treating these gases as waste, the system collects them as a valuable feedstock. The filled canisters are returned for processing, where the system extracts, separates, purifies, and prepares the captured anaesthetics for re-manufacture. 
The project will develop a next-generation system designed to reduce dependence on conventional anaesthetic gas scavenging infrastructure. This would allow hospitals to move from a 鈥渦se-and-vent鈥 model to one that captures and retains anaesthetic gases for reuse. To support large-scale adoption, the consortium will also develop automated recovery and purification processes, improve product design, reduce processing time and cost, and create software systems for traceability, sustainability monitoring, hazardous waste management and regulatory compliance.

Regulatory engagement is central to the project. Recovered volatile anaesthetics have a different impurity profile from virgin medicines, so the project will generate evidence to support new standards and a potential pharmacopoeia monograph for recycled anaesthetic agents. The project will also assess the full environmental case through lifecycle assessment, helping to demonstrate whether circular volatile anaesthetic recovery can reduce emissions, energy use, waste and reliance on virgin manufacture. Clinical and operational trials will test the technology in realistic settings and de-risk the pathway to wider adoption.
Finally, the project looks beyond the anaesthetic itself by investigating the end-of-life management of the capture materials. The project will assess spent activated carbon for regeneration, reuse, repurposing, and conversion into higher-value materials, helping ensure that decarbonising anaesthesia does not simply create a new waste stream. By linking hospital emissions capture, medicine re-manufacture, regulatory science, digital traceability, lifecycle assessment and materials valorisation, the project aims to provide a UK blueprint for circular, lower-carbon anaesthesia and sustainable medicines manufacturing.
 

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A national facility for radioactive and advanced materials characterisation
The Radioisotope and Advanced Materials Suite (RAMS) is a newly refurbished, radiation-licensed research facility that brings together advanced materials characterisation, radioisotope science, geochemistry, environmental radioactivity, and applied analytical science, enabling the facility to support a far wider range of projects than a single-discipline laboratory. 
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