Robot Assistant, from Cambridge Reactor Design, is a mechanical organic chemistry technician capable of performing a range of repetitive processing operations. The unit works 24×7, has a load carrying capacity of 3kg, moves repeatedly and reliably to within 0.1mm, recognises motion, takes video images – and does not talk back at or argue with management personnel!

Currently, two versions of Robot Assistant have been developed, the Falcon Filtration Robot Assistant and the Eagle Extraction Robot Assistant. These state-of-the-art platforms collect all the data needed to deliver understanding of filtration and washing and liquid-liquid extraction processes. The key to their capability is on-board machine vision, which is used in a variety ways within the system. As well as capturing images of key procedures and generating information on rate of change, the data gathered is used for critical real-time decision making, whereby the next steps in the process are determined via automated feedback loops.

In order to fully exploit all the data collected, an automated reporting system has been developed with Tessella. Following automatic extraction of the data to a searchable database, user specified reports are created. These include appropriate data manipulation and calculations to generate, for example, cake resistance, cake compressibility and filtration rate graphs. The reporting software can be standalone, or can be networked to incorporate experiments from a number of systems.

The downstream unit operations Robot Assistant addresses are rarely thoroughly investigated as the tests are cumbersome and slow to carry out, and problems with the process may only become apparent on transfer to manufacturing scale. The Robot Assistant offers process R&D groups both the capability and the capacity needed to gain full process understanding, to challenge the limitations to the scale-up of downstream processing methods and so to design robust industrial processes.

It’s clear that by combining clever hardware solutions, with novel machine vision applications and appropriate reporting software, downstream processing operations within the chemical industry really can be more manageable. – and the automated organic chemistry technician is a reality.

For a case study describing the Falcon Filtration Robot Assistant and the automated reporting software please visit http://www.cambridgereactordesign.com/prod_eagle_falcon.html

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