📣 Help Shape the Future of UKRI's Gateway to Research (GtR)

We're improving UKRI's Gateway to Research and are seeking your input! If you would be interested in being interviewed about the improvements we're making and to have your say about how we can make GtR more user-friendly, impactful, and effective for the Research and Innovation community, please email gateway@ukri.org.

Computer Vision Kinetics for Industrial Metal Scavenging

Lead Research Organisation: University of Strathclyde
Department Name: Pure and Applied Chemistry

Abstract

AIMS IN BRIEF:
(i) Develop a computer vision enabled platform for the analysis of metal scavenging and related process-scale purification challenges.
(ii) Use predictive analytics to correlate video data with spectroscopic reaction monitoring methods.
(iii) Build recommended practices to integrate computer vision into industrial metal scavenging workflows, minimising requirements for time-consuming mass spectrometry methods.

External support: Centre for Process Analytics & Control Technology (CPACT, £10k cash); Scale-up Systems (£20k in-kind via software licenses and consultancy)
Strategic Themes: Measurement & Enabling Technologies; Innovation & Entrepreneurship

ABSTRACT:
This project strategically expands a UKRI Future Leaders Fellowship-funded research and commercialization programme to develop new computer vision-enabled colour analysis tools for reaction kinetics and parallel reaction analysis. Colour change phenomena are particularly important for industrial metal-catalysed reactions. Despite 60% of reactions in chemical industry being metal-catalysed, a data-rich understanding of catalyst recovery and recycling remains scientifically and economically challenging. Moreover, it is exceedingly rare to be able to monitor such processes in real-time on both very small and very large scales when a reaction transitions from lab to plant. Industry-supported proof-of-concept metal scavenging studies have revealed the productivity-enhancing potential of our analytical platform to provide an estimated 80-90% improvement in analytical processing time (from days to minutes). This emerging technology has been registered with technology transfer at Strathclyde in anticipation of intellectual property being generated during the course of the proposed research. The output from this project will be a flexible and data-rich software-based reaction monitoring method that will alleviate strain on more expensive and time-consuming analytical techniques used to monitor industrial reaction purification processes. In recognition of the potential impact, this SEA project has been endorsed by the CPACT and Scale-up Systems Ltd, with combined cash and in-kind contributions of over £30k.

People

ORCID iD

Calum Fyfe (Student)

Publications

10 25 50

Studentship Projects

Project Reference Relationship Related To Start End Student Name
EP/W524670/1 30/09/2022 29/09/2028
2738574 Studentship EP/W524670/1 30/09/2022 30/03/2027 Calum Fyfe