Factory in a Fumehood: Reagentless Flow Reactors as Enabling Techniques for Manufacture

This proposal aims to bring together a unique team of scientists from academia and industry to develop new enabling manufacturing techniques for the reagentless synthesis of high value chemical products. Why reagentless? In traditional chemical processes once a reagent has performed its task it needs to be removed from the product stream. Unless the spent reagent can be reactivated then the waste stream must be dealt with. Most processes require large amounts of reagent, placing a heavy financial and environmental burden on manufacturing of high value products such as pharmaceuticals. The Holy Grail would be to avoid reagents altogether. Photochemisty, electrochemistry and thermochemistry are reagentless techniques, requiring only electrical energy as a primary input and will be the focus of this project in order to provide new enabling techniques for manufacturing. By the use of flow chemistry techniques these three areas can be connected together to provide rapid access to complex, high value products - this is conceptualized as a 'Factory in a Fumehood' - where scale-up can be achieved with a small footprint and with greatly reduced operating costs and waste.

Manufacturing in the UK and Europe has suffered enormously over the past decade. The availability of cheap labour and the proliferation of CRO's in Asia has resulted in the outsourcing of both R&D and Manufacture. This has been particularly acute in the Pharmaceutical and Fine Chemical industries, in both of which the UK are world leading. The key problem is the high operational and depreciation costs associated with R&D labs and fixed manufacturing plants. Development of the reagentless flow chemistry techniques described herein will generate small footprint, portable reactors that can be housed in fumehoods. The 'Factory in a Fumehood' concept has been inspired by Berry and GSK colleagues who recently built a plant that is capable of manufacturing a product worth £6Bn per annum. This continuous process has a footprint of just 4-fumehoods and will shortly be reduced to manufacturing practice at an estimated cost of £5M. With such relatively trivial set-up and operating costs why outsource? Indeed, the recent GSK developments have the manufacturing capability of a conventional chemical manufacturing plant. The 'Factory in a Fumehood' concept has the real potential to create both jobs (in science and engineering and supporting areas) and wealth in the UK. At a fundamental level ready access to turnkey technologies that embody our reagentless techniques will have a profound impact on the chemical design philosophies of industrial chemists. This in turn will lead to the manufacture of new high value chemical products, creating new IP space. An added benefit will be the creation of commercial opportunities for UK based equipment design and manufacture to support the chemical manufacturing objectives.