Prosperity Partnership in Innovative Continuous Manufacturing for Industrial Chemicals (IConIC)

工业化学品创新连续制造繁荣合作伙伴关系 (IConIC)

• 批准号: EP/X025292/1
• 负责人: King Hii
• 金额: $ 874.74万
• 依托单位: Imperial College London
• 依托单位国家: 英国
• 项目类别: Research Grant
• 财政年份: 2023
• 资助国家: 英国
• 起止时间: 2023 至 无数据
• 项目状态: 未结题
• 来源: https://gtr.ukri.org/projects?ref=EP%2FX025292%2F1
• 关键词: Prosperity; Partnership; Innovative; Continuous; Manufacturing

Currently, most of the manufacturing the high-value chemicals such as agrochemicals and pharmaceuticals, are performed in 'batch' reactors, where the chemical feedstocks (largely petrochemicals based) are converted into the product through a sequence of 'units of operations', which includes several chemical transformations, and purification steps. As the volume of each reactor is fixed, some of these operations, if not the entire sequence, have to be repeated, in order to meet the market demand. Very often, batch-to-batch variation in quality can result, which has to be monitored closely at each stage of the process in order to meet stringent regulatory requirements for product purity. Conversely, in a continuous flow process, the individual units of operation are integrated to enable an uninterrupted flow of material and product. Inline analytics (sensors and detectors) can also be implemented to monitor the quality of the produced product in real-time. As the entire process operates non-stop ('steady state'), the volume of production is no longer limited by the reactor size. Potentially, a continuous process is more efficient in saving costs, energy, and time, without comprising product quality.Traditionally, high-value chemical products, such as agrochemicals and pharmaceuticals, are produced using batch reactors, as they are usually required in small volumes. In more recent years, there are significant economical and sustainability drivers for the chemical industry to adopt the use of continuous flow processes. However, their implementation is not easy; as continuous reactors tend to be less flexible, in terms of modifying them to produce different products. The ambition of the IConIC Partnership is to redesign the continuous process: from a fully-integrated, single-purpose unit, towards a flexible 'plug-and-play' system, where each unit of operation ('module') can be replaced or substituted easily without affecting the overall performance of the continuous process. This will require a better understanding of how the interplay between molecular properties, timescales of reactions (reaction kinetics), and process parameters. For industrial implementation, additional factors (e.g. costs, sustainability and regulatory requirements) also need to be taken into consideration to justify the capital investment needed to switch from batch to flow production. Over the past 5 years, BASF has been working with ICL to foster an active 'Flow Chemistry' community involving 50 researchers at both institutions. The IConIC partnership will not cement the relationship by initiating a programme of exciting and ambition research projects to translate the benefits of Flow Chemistry from the R&D lab into industrial practice. An important aspect is an emphasis on a seamless data flow and translation process across the WPs, including decision-making under uncertainty, multi-fidelity design of experiments, transfer learning, and proof-of-concept demonstration for scale-up.A key feature of IConIC is the inclusion of a number of other UK-based industrial partners to form a 'vertical consortium' along the value chain. Over the period of the grant, the Partnership will be expanded to include additional academic and industrial partners at the appropriate junctures, to leverage synergistic values. Ultimately this will enable the UK to take leadership in continuous flow manufacturing.

目前，大多数高价值化学品（如农用化学品和药品）的生产都是在“间歇”反应器中进行的，其中化学原料（主要是基于石化产品）通过一系列“操作单元”转化为产品，其中包括几个化学转化和净化步骤。由于每个反应器的体积是固定的，为了满足市场需求，其中一些操作，如果不是整个顺序，必须重复进行。通常会导致批次之间的质量变化，必须在过程的每个阶段密切监控，以满足严格的产品纯度法规要求。相反，在连续流过程中，各个操作单元被整合在一起，以实现物料和产品的不间断流动。还可以实现内联分析（传感器和检测器）来实时监控生产产品的质量。由于整个过程不间断运行（“稳定状态”），产量不再受反应器大小的限制。潜在地，一个连续的过程在不影响产品质量的情况下更有效地节省成本、能源和时间。传统上，高价值的化学产品，如农用化学品和药品，是使用间歇式反应器生产的，因为它们通常需要小批量生产。近年来，化学工业采用连续流工艺的经济和可持续性驱动因素显著。然而，它们的实施并不容易；由于连续反应器往往不太灵活，在修改它们以产生不同的产品方面。IConIC Partnership的目标是重新设计连续过程：从一个完全集成的单一用途单元，到一个灵活的“即插即用”系统，其中每个操作单元（“模块”）都可以轻松更换或替换，而不会影响连续过程的整体性能。这需要更好地理解分子性质、反应时间尺度（反应动力学）和工艺参数之间的相互作用。对于工业实施，还需要考虑其他因素（例如成本、可持续性和监管要求），以证明从批量生产转向流动生产所需的资本投资是合理的。在过去的5年里，巴斯夫一直与ICL合作，建立了一个活跃的“流动化学”社区，涉及两家机构的50名研究人员。icon的合作伙伴关系不会通过启动一个令人兴奋和雄心勃勃的研究项目来巩固关系，将Flow Chemistry的优势从研发实验室转化为工业实践。一个重要的方面是强调跨WPs的无缝数据流和转换过程，包括不确定性下的决策、实验的多保真度设计、迁移学习和扩大规模的概念验证演示。IConIC的一个关键特点是包括一些其他英国工业合作伙伴，沿着价值链形成一个“垂直联盟”。在资助期内，合作伙伴关系将在适当的时候扩大，包括更多的学术和工业伙伴，以发挥协同效应。最终，这将使英国在连续流制造业中处于领先地位。