Fine chemicals (chemicals more expensive than £7/kg) represent a wide range of compounds used as vitamins, drugs, polymer and fuel additives, dyes, fragrances, agrochemicals and many others. Only agrochemicals (including animal food supplements) as well as flavors & fragrances (F&F) contributes to a 40% share of the world’s fine chemicals production. The market is estimated to be $ 30 billion in 2014. As the population grows, the need for higher amounts of agrochemicals and F&F specialty chemicals will be increasing. Within developing countries, the market of animal food supplements is projected to increase rapidly over the next few decades (with an average 10% per year) mainly due to an increase in the standard of living.
In this project, a novel platform technology has been developed which is offering a new and exciting way to change the landscape of the fine chemical and pharmaceutical manufacturing processes through applications of catalytic coating in structured reactors. The developed process cuts down on operational costs in plants, and provides an end product of greater purity. The manufacturing lead time and plant footprint are significantly reduced. This is because processing times are decreased, unnecessary steps are eliminated, and the entire process is streamlined from start to finish (no more stops and starts).
A spin-out company, StoliCatalysts Ltd (www.stolicatalysts.com) has been established to commercialize the outcomes of this research project. Currently eight people including four full time R&D employees (scientists and engineers) are working in the company. Prof Rebrov is a director of the company.
StoliCatalysts offers a unique solution for continuous flow manufacturing in gas-liquid catalytic reactions making it possible to develop and synthesize new chemical compounds at a production scale up to 3 ton/year. The technology provides efficient reaction dynamics due to novel catalyst coatings deposited onto the inner surface of reactor tubes. This novel product provides a unique cost saving solution for continuous manufacturing, performing gas-liquid reactants involving a solid catalyst. It does not require consumers to purchase any extra equipment for their production lines. The catalytic reactions take place on recyclable catalyst tubing derived from conventional systems, ensuring excellent integration with existing batch and continuous flow production lines, ease of use and most importantly, efficient reactions dynamics providing improved product yield and no catalyst separation costs. This platform technology has the potential to bring a game changing flow design into the mainstream of fine chemical processing because of high mass and heat transfer rates in reactions providing higher reactor utilization and superior operational parameters, thus reducing manufacturing costs. Competing approaches do not provide such uniformity because of temperature and concentration maldistributions.
The company product will address 3 market segments: fine chemical manufacturers, contract research manufacturers (CRMs), and flow chemistry hardware suppliers. Early adopters are the nutraceutical, fragrance, fine chemicals companies which have the strongest value proposition. 2 Pilot tests with these established fine chemical companies have been completed to demonstrate scale for specific, high value, reactions. Mid term adopters, CRMs, would be partnering with the flow chemistry hardware suppliers and catalogue companies. Late adopters are the pharmaceutical companies where the manufacturing cost is small to the selling price, and contract research manufacturers who would only adopt complete proven reactors (catalyst-coated capillaries combined with an off the shelf distributer unit), most likely through our partnership with flow chemistry hardware suppliers
This innovative approach has already created some exciting traction from major players in the fine chemical market such as DSM, BASF, SABIC, Vapourtec and others.
