C-Tech Innovation has won a GBP278,000 development grant from The Carbon Trust to build and test a continuous-flow laboratory microwave reactor system.
Although microwave-enhanced chemistry has previously been used to speed-up chemical reactions in pharmaceutical discovery, to date the technology could only produce a few grams of material.
C-Tech's reactor design is scalable, allowing it to form the basis of future units that can produce larger quantities of material, up to tonnes of material a day.
The UK chemical industry's annual energy usage is currently about 68,000GWh, with a significant proportion of this being used in processes associated with the production of chemicals.
Microwave technology could save energy and reduce reaction times at laboratory scale.
Moving to industrial scale production could reduce energy use by 90 per cent.
Other benefits are that higher yields can be produced at the same time and that the quantity of reactant to be processed can be cut by 50 per cent.
C-Tech Innovation is a technology development and multi-disciplinary consultancy company.
It has more than 10 years' experience in applying microwave and RF heating technology to lab-based and large-scale production equipment.
C-Tech Innovation has developed production-scale microwave heating systems for the drying of ceramics, for pyrometallurgy, for plastics processing companies and large-scale systems for food and beverage manufacturers.
