Stoli Chem awarded a grant by the BEIS Industrial Energy Efficiency Accelerator (IEEA) to scale up continuous flow manufacturing for sustainable chemical production
Press release, 28 Nov 2022
The chemicals sector consumes the oil equivalent to 5.4 million cars annually to manufacture compounds as diverse as pharmaceuticals, battery materials and latex gloves. Establishing low-carbon, high-efficiency chemical production methods will make an important contribution to the UK’s Net Zero ambitions and competitiveness.
Stoli Chem’s £1.3M project “Scalable continuous manufacturing for sustainable chemical production”, awarded by the Industrial Energy Efficiency Accelerator (IEEA), will help create a step-change in production technology for the fine chemicals and pharmaceuticals industries, transforming inefficient batch processing into scalable continuous manufacturing.
Stoli Chem, in a collaboration with Robinson Brothers, one of the UK’s largest independent chemicals manufacturers, and the Process Intensification Group of Newcastle University will scale up Stoli’s Scalable Agitated Baffle Reactor (SABRe) system. The goal – to halve the economic and environmental costs of chemical manufacturing.
The IEEA is funded by the Department of Business, Energy & Industrial Strategy (BEIS) as part of the Net Zero Innovation Portfolio (NZIP) and it is managed by the Carbon Trust with support from Jacob’s and Innovate UK KTN.
Dr Nikolay Cherkasov, Stoli Chem’s Managing Director, said: “Our SABRe platform combines the flexibility of batch with precision and efficiency of continuous processes. It can cut energy consumption in half and significantly reduce the use of solvents. With the IEEA’s support, our consortium will scale and demonstrate green chemistry in an industrial setting.”
“This will create new jobs in the Midlands also. Stoli is hiring another organic chemist and chemical and mechanical engineers,” Dr Cherkasov added.
Paul McKinney, Associate Director at the Carbon Trust and programme manager of the IEEA, commented: “Decarbonising the fine chemicals industry is a key challenge for the UK. With the support of the BEIS Industrial Energy Efficiency Accelerator, I hope this project will bring the innovation and collaboration that will help accelerate the chemicals industry towards that goal.”
More details on gov.uk website.