###Developing Sustainable Chemical Manufacturing by Ball Milling & Continuous Reactive Extrusion (Mechanochemistry)
Project ID: 2228bd1114 (You will need this ID for your application)
Research Theme: Manufacturing The Future
UCL Lead department: School of Pharmacy
Lead Supervisor: Duncan Browne
Project Summary:
In order to improve food security, human health and quality of life, society depends on access to new and improved drugs, food protection agents, flavours, fragrances and materials. The provision of these chemicals to society is extremely wasteful from the point of chemical manufacturing. There is approximately 50 tonnes of waste for every tonne of desired material, the majority of this waste is solvent – this practice is unsustainable and is having an irreparable impact on our planet. This project will explore a promising technique that has the potential to compliment existing research and manufacturing methods, reduce waste generation and our dependence on fossil-fuel derived solvents. You will join the supervisory and research teams of Duncan Browne and Rachael Dickman to work on the development of cutting-edge sustainable chemistry methods with minimal reliance on the use of solvents. The techniques will focus on small scale ball-milling and larger scale reactive extrusion, including the use of new parallel reactor equipment capable of running 20 reactions in one go. Analysis of this data will be used to optimise solvent-minimised processes and to expedite the translation to scale-up by continuous reactive extrusion. We will develop earth-abundant metal catalysed processes in the ball-mill and exemplify them at large scale by translation to reactive extrusion with targets of several high-volume pharmaceuticals and crop protection agents. We are looking for applicants with experience in synthetic organic chemistry or related fields. Experience in chemical engineering, ball-milling and/or continuous processing is not essential and hands-on training will be provided.