Bridge memory leak

The new Create HDR Panorama feature in ACR accessed by Bridge was so I thought the best update feature in a long while. However the reality is it's proving less useful than I'd hoped for.

I am using a 27"iMac 4.2ghz i7 5k with 40gb of Ram and OS10.13.6. Bridge version 9.0.2.219

When launching Bridge, Mac Activity Monitor shows bridge using 125mb of memory, if I navigate to a folder holding 1gb of Canon Raw images the amount of ram used is then up to 460mb. Launching the raw file convertor from within Bridge to process 25 of the CR2 files increases the ram load to 1.82Gb. If I then use the "Merge to HDR Panorama" feature in ACR the load on memory increases to 21gb. All of which is fine as the machine has spare capacity.

The issue comes when trying to process similar subsequent batches of files. It would appear from Activity Monitor that Bridge continues to demand the original 21gb of memory even after the Merge to HDR Panorama task has been completed. Consequently subsequent processing of a similar nature results in the process taking far too long, the ram having been used up, the programme is writing to the scratch disk with a subsequent extension to the processing time.

The only way I can process more than one set of files in a reasonable amount of time is to close down Bridge and then relaunch. Which is a ridiculous workflow.

A first batch of 25 Raw files processed using Merge to HDR in Bridge/ACR takes 2 mins 30sec to complete, a subsequent set takes 3 mins 45sec.

A first batch of 25 Raw files processed using Merge to HDR in PtGui takes 41 seconds and a subsequent set takes 41 seconds. Granted PtGui doesn't offer the same level of adjustment to the merged file but its performance does not seem to deteriorate.

Any advice and suggestions to make Bridge perform more consistenly would be appreciated.