Grants and Contributions:

Grant or Award spanning more than one fiscal year (2017-2018 to 2018-2019).

The project will involve the design, construction and integration of reactor modules which are capable ofx000D
receiving fluids from multiple reagent reservoirs for batch or flow synthetic chemistry experiments. Currentx000D
conventional manufacturing of fine chemicals uses large reaction vessels in which all the reagents are addedx000D
and the reaction stirred and heated or cooled as necessary to drive the transformations to completion. For ax000D
variety of reasons, such reactions can sometimes not reach preset specifications and this is referred to as a batchx000D
failure. In the pharmaceutical sector, this can have catastrophic consequences for patients heavily reliant onx000D
constant supply of the active pharmaceutical ingredient (API) that makes up their drugs. As a consequence, thex000D
pharmaceutical sector targets the production of 2.5X the actual annual requirement of API, just to ensure ax000D
constant supply. This material is biologically active and if not used, must then be carefully decomposed, whichx000D
is not only an unnecessary cost but raises health and environmental concerns. Flow chemistry is seen as thex000D
future of the fine chemical manufacturing sector as the material is made constantly, but on a much smallerx000D
scale. So, it is safer, consumes less energy, and only produces the amount of API material that is required. Mostx000D
often, reactions have been optimized in batch reactors, and then are modified to suit production in flow. Therex000D
exists no platform to readily move between these two manufacturing technologies. This proposal seeks to fillx000D
this gap with new robotic reactor technology that will allow for the ready movement back and forth betweenx000D
process optimization for batch reactions and for flow applications. This will be disruptive technology and therex000D
are presently zero products in this marketspace.