Public Funding for Procter & Gamble Technical Centres Limited

To relate the affective response and attitudes of the consumer to the technical performance of products with greater efficiency by the novel application of Rasch methodology.

To develop a modelling and assessment capability to optimise the design, production and supply of sustainable home and personal care consumer products and meet net zero carbon targets.

The chemicals industry must decouple from the fossil dependency of the past and become a planet positive force for the future by embracing new sustainable raw materials and manufacturing processes. The BIOSECT project focuses on next generation sustainable ingredients for cleaning products (e.g. liquid and powder laundry detergents) and other applications. The aim of the project is to assess the potential of new bio-based feedstocks and/or bio-manufacturing processes to replace existing fossil-based feedstocks and/or conventional chemical manufacturing processes. The project will centre on two ingredients used in large volumes in detergents today: (1) A solvent used in the production of laundry liquids and pods, and (2) Chelating agents that are used to bond with metals ions to improve washing performance The project will assess the feasibility of providing drop-in replacements or substitution of these ingredients with materials produced by bio-manufacturing using renewable carbon feedstocks, such as sugars from agricultural wastes or carbon dioxide captured from industrial waste gases. The project will assess the technical feasibility, the likely cost implications, and the potential environmental benefits of these new bio-derived materials. Transitioning to a sustainable bio-based chemicals industry will not only help the UK meet Net Zero commitments, it also will also enable the industry to meet the growing public and industrial demand for eco-friendly chemicals and products, and so help deliver the UK's clean growth strategy.

The SAVVIER project aims to help UK materials and manufacturing organisations become more competitive and fit for the future by helping them work together in efficient and cooperative supply chains. In our vision for the future, the wastes or by-products of one industrial partner in a supply chain become the material inputs for another partner. These 'secondary materials' are reused as replacements for virgin raw materials (e.g. sourced from the extraction of earth resources). Material users see benefits as they do not have to source and import virgin materials, while material suppliers avoid the problem of disposing of their wastes or by-products. This collaborative approach -- known as Industrial Symbiosis -- also provides a great opportunity to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and environmental pollution from wastes, as resources are maintained in use for longer. The SAVVIER project partners aim to show the feasibility of using a digital platform and supply chain mapping and assessment methods to help establish collaborative UK supply chains for the supply, processing and use of waste-derived materials. The project will focus on silicate and aluminosilicate materials. Silicates (i.e. materials that contain a metal ion, silicon and oxygen) and aluminosilicates (that additionally contain aluminium ions) are important inorganic materials used in multiple applications, including laundry detergents, paper and card, adhesives, cements, tyres, desiccants (including cat litter) and as catalysts for many industrial processes. The project will use a real industrial challenge (replacement of silicates and aluminosilicates in dry laundry powers) as a focus for the project.

This project is about the development of a new business model and capability to enable the utilisation of industrial waste gases from the foundation industries, to generate affordable feedstocks and chemicals for use in the production of consumer products in the UK. Such an industrial symbiosis model will displace the import of non-sustainable materials from outside of the UK currently used to supply the consumer goods industry thus building a new UK value chain whilst simultaneously helping to mitigate the waste emissions from the foundation industries (specifically paper, chemicals, and steel). Aside from the technical aspects of the project, additionally, the business model development will frame the economic incentives that will likely be required to make the model work (e.g., carbon taxes on imports of fossil-based materials). The project will uniquely bring together partners from across the whole supply/value chain to achieve this.

Many manufacturing industries are seeking to make biodegradable products and/or use natural, bio-sourced, ingredients, while minimising the use of chemical preservatives. However, protecting these products from problematic microbes (such as bacteria, yeasts and mould) is a major challenge. ARGUS (Digit**a**l Cont**r**ol of Microbes for Resilient FMC**G** S**u**pply Chain**s**), aims to create a digital solution to improve the management of microbial contamination across UK manufacturing supply chains. Microbial contamination can be introduced at many stages across the supply chain; including raw materials supply, during manufacturing processes, in storage, and during transport between manufacturing sites. If left unchecked, microbes can build up in process fluids and on pipework and containers, creating manufacturing problems, corrosion, spoiling materials and potentially leading to expensive product withdrawals and recalls. At worst, this can lead to adverse health impacts for the manufacturing workforce and consumers. Today, microbial management is expensive and time-consuming and depends on using chemical preservatives/biocides, regular cleaning and taking samples at multiple points for lab testing. Often materials are held awaiting microbial test results, reducing productivity and efficiency. The ARGUS Phase 2 (Industrial Research) project will develop and demonstrate a new digital solution that is able to measure and share levels of microbial contamination **directly in place** across an end-to-end manufacturing supply chain. This innovation will reduce manufacturing and shipping delays, provide early-warning of problems, and help supply chain partners to develop new, safe and sustainable, bio-product formulations with reduced levels of preservatives. The project outputs will be evaluated within an existing UK Home & Personal Care (HPC) product supply chain. New direct inline microbial digital sensor prototypes will be developed and evaluated within multiple manufacturing and bulk transport locations, including within tanker trucks. Relevant data will be collected, shared and analysed in a First-of-a-Kind digital platform for microbial health monitoring, management and assurance. The project will lay the groundwork for the future commercial investment, development and deployment of ARGUS in Home and Personal Care product manufacturing supply chains. Importantly, the innovation will have potential application across many other UK supply chains, including food and drinks, paints and coatings, pharma, and biofuel, where microbial health management is also a growing cost and concern.

Protecting Home & Personal Care products (such as laundry detergents, shampoos and cosmetics) from problematic microbes is a critical factor in the design of products, manufacturing systems and integrated supply chains. The industry is increasingly seeking to introduce new, more biodegradable materials, reduce environmental footprints and increase the agility and resilience of these supply chains. However, current microbiology-based test methods for assuring product quality are too slow and lacking in diagnostic power to catalyse these supply chain transformations. ARGUS aims to create a real-time measurement solution to detect microbes at key points across the supply chain, and identify pinch points in production systems for targeted cleaning where microbial accumulation is more likely to occur. No longer reliant on offline testing, these instantaneous measures of material quality and supply chain health could combine to create digital Certificates of Analysis enabling frictionless movement of materials, lower cost operation, and acceleration of innovative new products to market. This Feasibility Study will evaluate the potential of three Industrial Digital Technologies to enable this transformation -- sensors for in-line microbial count across the supply chain, sensors for material accumulation points in static production systems, and digital Certificates of Analysis. Taking an established UK Home & Personal Care supply chain as a case study, it will characterise critical supply chain design criteria, assess potential value of these new technologies and propose a path through Industrial Research to market. It supports UK Government strategy to increase adoption of and create markets for Industrial Digital Technologies, amplify supply chain collaborations between larger and smaller companies, and increase resilience and sustainability of operations, ultimately helping to meet the UK's 2050 Net Carbon Zero target.

Counterfeit products cost the UK economy over £12Bn annually in lost revenue and brand damage. Counterfeit products in healthcare, aviation, pharmaceuticals, electronics and other sectors have significant safety risks. Intogral Ltd and its partners propose to develop an innovative browser software platform for use by the manufacturing supply chain which includes Artificial Intelligence-based counterfeiting countermeasures utilising Smartphone pictures. P&G have offered to support the project by providing a test use case and access to its existing anti-counterfeiting measures, including its supply chain and security partners. Durham University will support the project with translational research and help with the Exploitation Plan.

New therapeutic products in the pharma industries are invariably large, complex chemical molecules -- e.g., synthetic active ingredients, amino acids, peptides etc. In the consumer goods and food industries, complex emulsions form the backbone of products such as detergents, beauty products, milk and other liquid-based foods. An essential pre-requisite for model-based Digital Design and Production of these materials is the accurate prediction of their physical and other behavioural properties. Quick and reliable property calculations will allow a transformational way of working which will benefit customers, e.g. by accelerating access to novel oncology therapies with improved efficacy.Traditional approaches for material property prediction for complex systems rely primarily on empirical methods that require extensive experimentation and offer limited predictive accuracy beyond the range of experimental data. This severely limits their applicability within Digital Design, where the ability to investigate a wide range of alternatives _in silico_ without the need for extensive experimentation is key.Recent advances in statistical mechanics of fluids are beginning to offer the promise of a more systematic and rigorous approach to addressing at least some key challenges, e.g., the prediction of solid/liquid equilibria (solubility) for pharmaceutical systems of industrial importance, speciation of complex reactive mixtures, and transport properties for a wide range of systems. These academic developments have been paralleled by the emergence of a new commercially-available software code called gPROMS Properties, which incorporates recent academic advances in this area and is already fully coupled within process modelling tools used to underpin Digital Design applications in the pharmaceutics, food and chemicals sectors.Today, gPROMS Properties is being successfully applied to the Oil & Gas and chemical/petrochemical industries, where the systems of interest are primarily gases and simple fluids. This fast-track project aims to develop and extend gPROMS Properties to become an enabling technology able to meet the more complex needs of the formulated products industries, using a two-pronged approach. The technological basis will be developed by expanding the _types_ of systems that can be handled (e.g. emulsions) and the _types_ of properties that can be predicted (e.g. solid/liquid equilibria, micelle formation conditions, and rheological properties). Simultaneously, the _ranges_ of molecules that can be modelled will be expanded by further exploration of publicly available data. These developments will be applied by industrial partners to solve business problems, demonstrating that virtual product and process design in the formulated products industries is now coming within reach.

A new generation of THz imagers has been developed by Durham University using Quantum Technology. This high speed, sensitive, safe, non-ionising, imaging system is based on the concept of transforming low energy THz radiation to visible light, which can then be easily imaged using any well-established imaging technology.This breakthrough technological advancement has substantial potential in providing radical new solutions to real and current challenges in industry, specifically where current techniques are limited by material discrimination and throughput.

To develop and embed an understanding of applying molecular probes to better understand the complex 3D molecular systems involved in important cleaning problems relating to household cleaning products.

To develop and build a portable device using SWIR spectroscopy to identify the type, nature and quantity of consumer soil leading to higher quality data and a better understanding of cleaning consumer fabrics, supporting the development of novel cleaning product formulation.

The presence of biofilms in manufacturing can act as a source of product contamination, resulting in persistent quality issues, equipment failure (microbially induced corrosion) and an ongoing cost to manufacturing companies through ensuring their absence and removal. Ultimately, this results in a cost to the environment, through waste disposal, energy costs and water usage, and in the worst cases can impact on consumer health. This project looks to evaluate new materials which can be used in manufacturing to minimise the presence of biofilms and improve the cleanability of manufacturing processes. If the project is successful, we would look to improve the environmental footprint of manufacturing, while improving the efficiency of delivering quality products to the UK's consumers.

The SWITCH project will understand & model, via new consumer research, data analysis methodologies & tools, the human factors that affect consumers' conversion into different product forms (e.g. laundry detergent powder to liquid) for household goods in key markets: UK, China, and Brazil. We aim to improve our capability, beyond the state of the art, to predict & therefore influence form conversion. This will result in: 1) improved consumer experience (at retail and use); 2) increased product sales of more modern forms which typically have improved environmental impact; 3) market share/category growth. Current limited understanding does not allow us to predict market response to new forms well, resulting in wasted investment. This study will focus on a much wider variety of data, including social media, to glean more insights into our consumers preferred product forms, and what factors would trigger conversion. We will use emerging data analysis techniques to create new mathematical models that will help us predict market conversion readiness. This study can then be reapplied across multiple industries for products that exist in different forms.

To identify the impact of aging and environmental stress on cellular bio energetics in human skin providing novel insights,targets and material testing for direct commercial application in both skin and hair.

This industrially-led collaborative project is to develop and commercialise a tool which will enable a step change to the UK spray drying manufacturing process, with a 10% increase in energy efficiency. This fits under the HVM strategy, specifically pillar "Increasing the global competitiveness of UK manufacturing technologies by creating more efficient and effective manufacturing systems". The team will use a novel systems modelling approach to redesign the process for innovative heat management on a single particle scale. Based on extensive modelling capability for spray-drying, the individual particle temperature-time history throughout the spray drying process will be predicted, vs. relying on the current "data blind" black-box methodology. This innovative approach will enable right first time energy usage versus too late or expensive heat recovery approaches, so significantly reducing energy usage and CO2 emissions, without sacrificing product quality.

To develop and embed a comprehensive understanding of powder caking mechanisms related to different environmental interactions and the analytical tests to reliably predict caking propensity.

To transfer novel powder granulation technology for use in the development of household detergents.

Awaiting Public Summary