Process Analytical Technology (PAT) Approaches for Continuous Flow Chemistry

The ability to monitor, control and maintain the quality in process chemistry, is key to all chemical industry. Whilst historically chemical processes have been performed prevently in batch, recent trends have moved towards continuous flow chemistry, due to its safer and higher efficiency for synthesis.

Recently, Process Analytical Technology (PAT) has been developed to allow for process monitoring to be performed both in-situ and in real time. This strategy offers a greater amount of detailed information, as the data is acquired under reaction conditions. All species within the reaction can be observed, providing mechanistic insights, via the study of intermediates formed in the process. Benefits are further seen in the ability to view a system in real time. This allows for impurities to be detected during the reaction, allowing for optimal reaction conditions to be identified by minimising impurity formation.

The combination of new PAT and self-optimisation algorithms will lead to faster optimisation and more sustainable processes; featuring shorter reaction times, higher quality products, as well as less waste being produced.
The aim of this project is to combine flow chemistry with PAT techniques, to increase the efficiency of chemical synthesis. We will use several different PAT approaches, and combine these with self-optimisation, to reduce the time needed for process development using steady state and time-resolved spectroscopy.

Many organic reactions, particularly photochemical ones, involve a sequence of elemental processes spanning a very wide range of timescales from picoseconds up to many seconds. The ability to apply PAT across these timescales would lead to a very powerful means of optimisation tool. Thus, we plan to apply Time Resolved spectroscopies for process monitoring of the transient species involved in photoredox and other reactions to give mechanistic insight, thereby facilitating reaction optimisation and scale up.

This CDT will deliver impact aligned to the following agendas:

People
A2P will provide over 60 PhD graduates with the skill sets required to deliver innovative sustainable products and processes into the UK chemicals manufacturing industry. A2P will inspire and develop leaders who will:
- understand the needs of industrial end-users;
- embed sustainability across a range of sectors; and
- catalyse the transition to a more productive and resilient UK economy.

Economy
A2P will promote a step change towards a circular economy that embraces resilience and efficiency in terms of atoms and energy. The benefits of adopting more sustainable design principles and smarter production are clear. For example, the global production of active pharmaceutical ingredients (APIs) has been estimated at 65,000-100,000 tonnes per annum. The scale of associated waste is > 10 million tonnes per annum with a disposal cost of more than £15 billion. Consequently, even a modest efficiency increase by applying new, more sustainable chemical processes would deliver substantial economic savings and environmental wins. A2P will seek and deliver systematic gains across all sectors of the chemicals manufacturing industry. Our goals of providing cross-scale training in chemical sciences with economic and life- cycle awareness will drive uptake of sustainable best practice in UK industry, leading to improved economic competitiveness.

Knowledge
This CDT will deliver significant new knowledge in the development of more sustainable processes and products. It will integrate the philosophy of sustainability with catalysis, synthetic methodology, process engineering, and scale-up. Critical concepts such as energy/resource efficiency, life cycle analysis, recycling, and sustainability metrics will become seamlessly joined to what is considered a 'normal' approach to new molecular products. This knowledge and experience will be shared through publications, conferences and other engagement activities. A2P partners will provide efficient routes to market ensuring the efficient translation and transferal of new technologies is realised, ensuring impact is achieved.

Society
The chemistry-using industries manufacture a rich portfolio of products that are critical in maintaining a high quality of life in the UK. A2P will provide highly trained people and new knowledge to develop smarter, better products, whilst increasing the efficiency and sustainability of chemicals manufacture.
To amplify the impacts of our CDT, effective public engagement and technology transfer will become crucially important. As a general comment, 'sustainability' styled research is often regarded in a positive light by society, however, the science that underpins its effective implementation is often poorly appreciated. The University of Nottingham has developed an effective communication portfolio (with dedicated outreach staff) to tackle this issue. In addition to more traditional routes of scientific communication and dissemination, A2P will develop a portfolio of engagement and outreach activities including blogs, webpages, public outreach events, and contribution of material to our award-winning YouTube channel, www.periodicvideos.com.

A2P will build on our successful Sustainable Chemicals and Processes Industry Forum (SCIF), which will provide entry to networks with a wide range of chemical science end-users (spanning multinationals through to speciality SMEs), policy makers and regulators. We will share new scientific developments and best practice with leaders in these areas, to help realise the full impact of our CDT. Annual showcase events will provide a forum where knowledge may be disseminated to partners, we will broaden these events to include participants from thematically linked CDTs from across the UK, we will build on our track record of delivering hi-impact inter-CDT events with complementary centres hosted by the Universities of Bath and Bristol.