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

目前，大多数高价值化学品（如农用化学品和药物）的制造都是在“间歇”反应器中进行的，其中化学原料（主要是基于石油化学品）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纯化步骤。由于每个反应器的体积是固定的，这些操作中的一些（如果不是整个序列的话）必须重复，以满足市场需求。通常，可能会导致批次间的质量变化，必须在工艺的每个阶段密切监测，以满足产品纯度的严格法规要求。相反，在连续流工艺中，各个操作单元被集成，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运行（“稳定状态”），生产量不再受反应器尺寸的限制。连续工艺在节省成本、能源和时间方面更有效，而且不会影响产品质量。传统上，高价值的化学产品，如农用化学品和药品，通常使用间歇式反应器生产，因为它们通常需要小批量。近年来，化学工业采用连续流工艺具有重要的经济和可持续性驱动力。然而，它们的实施并不容易;因为连续反应器在修改它们以生产不同产品方面往往不太灵活。IConIC合作伙伴的目标是重新设计连续过程：从完全集成的单一用途单元，到灵活的“即插即用”系统，其中每个操作单元（“模块”）可以轻松更换或替换，而不会影响连续过程的整体性能。这将需要更好地理解分子特性、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水线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，共同培养一个活跃的“流动化学”社区，该社区包括两家机构的50名研究人员。IConIC的合作伙伴关系不会通过启动令人兴奋和雄心勃勃的研究项目计划来巩固这种关系，以将流动化学的好处从研发实验室转化为工业实践。一个重要方面是强调WP之间的无缝数据流和转换过程，包括不确定性下的决策、多保真度实验设计、迁移学习和用于扩大规模的概念验证演示。IConIC的一个关键特征是包括许多其他英国工业合作伙伴，以形成一个沿价值链的“垂直联盟”沿着。在赠款期间，该伙伴关系将扩大到包括更多的学术和工业合作伙伴在适当的结合点，以利用协同价值。最终，这将使英国在连续流制造业中处于领先地位。

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.