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)的制造是在“间歇”反应器中进行的，在那里，化学原料(主要是以石化为基础的)通过一系列的“操作单元”转化为产品，其中包括几个化学转化和提纯步骤。由于每个反应堆的体积是固定的，为了满足市场需求，这些操作中的一些操作，如果不是整个序列，也必须重复进行。经常会导致批次之间的质量差异，这必须在过程的每个阶段进行密切监控，以满足对产品纯度的严格监管要求。相反，在连续流动过程中，各个操作单元被集成在一起，以实现材料和产品的不间断流动。还可以实施在线分析(传感器和检测器)，以实时监控所生产产品的质量。由于整个过程不间断地运行(稳定状态)，生产量不再受反应堆大小的限制。传统上，高价值的化学产品，如农用化学品和药品，是使用间歇反应器生产的，因为它们通常是小批量生产的。最近几年，化学工业采用连续流动工艺具有显著的经济和可持续性驱动因素。然而，它们的实施并不容易；因为连续式反应堆在改造它们以生产不同产品方面往往不太灵活。标志性的伙伴关系的目标是重新设计连续流程：从一个完全集成的单一用途单元，转变为一个灵活的“即插即用”系统，其中每个操作单元(“模块”)都可以很容易地更换或替换，而不会影响连续流程的整体性能。这将需要更好地了解分子性质、反应时间(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水作业所需的资本投资是合理的。在过去的5年里，巴斯夫一直在与ICL合作，培养一个活跃的‘流动化学’社区，这两个机构都有50名研究人员参与。这一标志性的合作伙伴关系不会通过启动一系列令人兴奋和雄心勃勃的研究项目来巩固两国关系，这些项目旨在将流动化学的好处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，包括不确定情况下的决策、多保真实验设计、迁移学习和扩大规模的概念验证演示。ICIONIC的一个关键特征是纳入了许多其他总部位于英国的行业合作伙伴，沿着价值链组成了一个“垂直联盟”。在赠款期间，伙伴关系将在适当的时候扩大到包括更多的学术和工业合作伙伴，以利用协同价值。最终，这将使英国在连续流水作业制造业中处于领先地位。