Abstract

Flow Chemistry: A Sustainable Voyage through the Chemical Universe en route to Smart Manufacturing

Milad Abolhasani, Assistant Professor, North Carolina State University

Due to pressing negative environmental impacts, raw material shortages, and vulnerabilities in chemical supply chains, it has become increasingly important to improve the adaptability as well as the energy, time, and material efficiency of each step of the chemical process life cycle. The COVID-19 pandemic has highlighted many of these issues, as the world became acutely aware of supply-chain dependencies which are vulnerable to regional catastrophes. Modular distributed manufacturing approaches have the potential to withstand these disruptions through risk diversification. In addition, reconfigurable chemical manufacturing systems are amenable to pivoting chemical production to address changing market demands. This seminar will focus on how flow chemistry technologies can enable the realization of these new paradigms and meet the demands of the next generation of modular, accessible, and sustainable chemical and materials research, development, and manufacturing. First, I will discuss how convergence of process intensification and chemical synthesis with artificial intelligence can accelerate navigation through chemical universe of advanced functional materials and molecules toward smart manufacturing. Next, I will present a self-driving laboratory for on-demand synthesis and scalable manufacturing of energy-relevant materials. Finally, I will present the unique reconfigurability aspect of flow chemistry to close the scale gap in chemical and materials research through facile switching from the reaction exploration/exploitation to production mode.