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As an IT guy, I am wondering why this is still a mostly manual and rather dangerous process. Surely programmable machines can be built to process reagents in a

As an IT guy, I am wondering why this is still a mostly manual and rather dangerous process. Surely programmable machines can be built to process reagents in a safe and flexible way?

londons_explore 7y ago
This is especially true since the number of possible "instructions" is pretty low. Heat it, cool it, mix it, filter it, centrifuge it, compress it, take a sample and put it through a test instrument. Pretty much all chemistry is some sequence of the above.
- girvo 7y ago
  But your number of inputs is huge, and cleaning steps in between others in a reusable/reconfigurable machine is a difficult challenge to overcome all on its own. It’s not impossible and smart people are working on it, but it is incredibly hard.
LeifCarrotson 7y ago
I'm a controls engineer. We're very good at making machines that will do a single process over and over. It's insanely difficult to do arbitrary processes with one machine.
- wuschel 7y ago
  Hi, That is a very good question. In my PhD I built, among other things, a very primitive parallel stirring system in order to speed up the synthesis of test batches. Although a very crude device, there was tons of stuff that I needed to optimize. There are many steps in the practical work that is chemical synthesis. It might be removing air, adding reagents in different elemental states, cooling/heating/keeping and certain temperature, observing the reaction, taking aliquots, terminating reaction, and the many steps of purification. I'd argue that while automation is possible to a certain degree (continuous reactor systems are the most the most interesting IMHO), the resulting mashines are always problem (reagent, reaction, etc) specific. And here lies the problem.
  - deleted 7y ago
    [deleted]
EL_Loco 7y ago
There are machines that do this. Prety expensive though. Maybe too expensive for a uni's department where there won't be enough work to justify the machine's price?
- lazyjones 7y ago
  Not sure how flexible this one is, but it looks cheap enough for a small department to make their own sildenafil: https://science.sciencemag.org/content/363/6423/eaav2211.full https://science.sciencemag.org/content/363/6423/eaav2211.ful... The yields are quite bad though AFAICT.
tikej 7y ago
People are working on it: https://www.gla.ac.uk/news/archiveofnews/2018/november/headline_624196_en.html https://www.gla.ac.uk/news/archiveofnews/2018/november/headl... I am chemical engineer and in my studies there was no programming and algorithm training at all (we did tiny bit of Scilab to solve some systems of equations but that’s all!). Chemists in general (beyond theoretical and some open-minded exeptions) don’t program and don’t want to program. Synthetic/organic chemist still perceive synthesis as form of “art” ;) Therefore it would require huge shift in the mentality. It is going to happen but not easily and and later than it could for social reasons :(
marcosdumay 7y ago
Chemistry uses a very large set of "primitive steps" (from reactants and catalyzers to reactors and reaction conditions), so any such machine will have a narrow set of reactions it can produce. Unless of course, your automation machine has the capacity of assembling and dissembling equipment. Besides, cleaning everything is very machine unfriendly.

As an IT guy, I am wondering why this is still a mostly manual and rather dangerous process. Surely programmable machines can be built to process reagents in a safe and flexible way?

londons_explore 7y ago

This is especially true since the number of possible "instructions" is pretty low. Heat it, cool it, mix it, filter it, centrifuge it, compress it, take a sample and put it through a test instrument. Pretty much all chemistry is some sequence of the above.

girvo 7y ago
But your number of inputs is huge, and cleaning steps in between others in a reusable/reconfigurable machine is a difficult challenge to overcome all on its own. It’s not impossible and smart people are working on it, but it is incredibly hard.

LeifCarrotson 7y ago

I'm a controls engineer. We're very good at making machines that will do a single process over and over. It's insanely difficult to do arbitrary processes with one machine.

wuschel 7y ago
Hi, That is a very good question. In my PhD I built, among other things, a very primitive parallel stirring system in order to speed up the synthesis of test batches. Although a very crude device, there was tons of stuff that I needed to optimize. There are many steps in the practical work that is chemical synthesis. It might be removing air, adding reagents in different elemental states, cooling/heating/keeping and certain temperature, observing the reaction, taking aliquots, terminating reaction, and the many steps of purification. I'd argue that while automation is possible to a certain degree (continuous reactor systems are the most the most interesting IMHO), the resulting mashines are always problem (reagent, reaction, etc) specific. And here lies the problem.
- deleted 7y ago
  [deleted]

EL_Loco 7y ago

There are machines that do this. Prety expensive though. Maybe too expensive for a uni's department where there won't be enough work to justify the machine's price?

lazyjones 7y ago
Not sure how flexible this one is, but it looks cheap enough for a small department to make their own sildenafil: https://science.sciencemag.org/content/363/6423/eaav2211.full https://science.sciencemag.org/content/363/6423/eaav2211.ful... The yields are quite bad though AFAICT.

tikej 7y ago

People are working on it: https://www.gla.ac.uk/news/archiveofnews/2018/november/headline_624196_en.html https://www.gla.ac.uk/news/archiveofnews/2018/november/headl... I am chemical engineer and in my studies there was no programming and algorithm training at all (we did tiny bit of Scilab to solve some systems of equations but that’s all!). Chemists in general (beyond theoretical and some open-minded exeptions) don’t program and don’t want to program. Synthetic/organic chemist still perceive synthesis as form of “art” ;) Therefore it would require huge shift in the mentality. It is going to happen but not easily and and later than it could for social reasons :(

marcosdumay 7y ago

Chemistry uses a very large set of "primitive steps" (from reactants and catalyzers to reactors and reaction conditions), so any such machine will have a narrow set of reactions it can produce. Unless of course, your automation machine has the capacity of assembling and dissembling equipment. Besides, cleaning everything is very machine unfriendly.