**HydRegen vision:** The HydRegen technologies offer the potential for cleaner, safer, faster and cheaper chemical manufacture. Deep understanding of biology and chemistry allow the HydRegen team to select the best components from biology and use them to develop robust biotechnologies that solve real problems in the chemicals sectors. We expect our technologies to play a part in the UK chemicals sector meeting ambitious Net Zero emissions targets (by 2050) and increasing adoption of enabling technologies such as Industrial Biocatalysis and continuous flow process. Currently we are addressing challenges in the manufacture of pharmaceuticals and speciality chemicals (e.g. flavours and fragrances) and exploring the potential of our technologies for larger-scale, lower-value chemical production. **AMT:** The patented active mixing technology opens up continuous manufacturing for a wide range of processes, mitigating challenges associated with the presence of solid particles, such as in heterogenous catalytic hydrogenation reactions. The range of Coflore continuous flow reactors offer a scalable manufacturing solution from grams to kilotonnes production per annum, de-risking tech transfer from R&D to pilot to commercial scale. According to a 2021 report by PwC, continuous manufacturing can increase energy efficiency up to 50% and reduce waste by 33% compared to existing batch methods of production. Global pressures such as the energy crisis and covid, have led EU and USA based companies to look to "re-shore" production away from India and China to strengthen supply chains. Project outcomes: * Showcase de-risked, bio-manufacturing route for two generic active pharmaceutical ingredients and package for licensing to UK and global chemical producers. * Improved competitivity and commercial-reputation in delivering bio-manufacturing capabilities providing a disruptive sustainable bio-manufacturing strategy by 2050\. * Evaluation of bio-based route to 'nitration' chemistry and consequently bio-cascades for nitration-reduction in specialty chemical manufacturing.

Flow reactors are a continuous, lean manufacturing alternative to traditional batch-wise manufacturing methods employed by the chemical and pharmaceutical industries. Continuous flow manufacturing offers the chemical industry a route towards; reducing its carbon footprint by reducing process energy requirements and waste generation, re-shoring production to strengthen supply chains and increasing existing process plant productive capacity. Flow reactors are inherently more efficient (by virtue of reduced size) than currently used batch reactors and variously offer higher yields of chemical product, improved chemical product purity, lower energy costs, lower process solvent usage and lower process waste generation. AM Technology are a leading manufacturer of flow reactors, with our patented Coflore range of reactors in daily use worldwide across the chemical and pharmaceutical industries at R&D and pilot-scale. To date, economic barriers have limited widespread adoption of production-scale flow reactors. AM Technology will exploit advanced manufacturing techniques such as additive manufacturing for equipment development as part of this project to greatly decrease manufacturing costs and overcome this commercial customer barrier for adoption. An energy comparison model will be generated as part of this project and published in a white paper to clearly outline the potential savings and efficiencies to be realised by switching to lean chemical manufacturing. This, combined with lower manufacturing costs, will remove the economic barriers to technology adoption across the chemical and pharmaceutical industries and result in increased sales and revenue for AM Technology, coupled with job creation in the Northwest. The flow reactor technology being refined by AM Technology as part of this project will enable the chemical industry to significantly increase their high-value production, reduce chemical manufacturing energy consumption and increase resource efficiency. The UK chemical industry is geographically concentrated in Northwest England, with the sector worth around £10bn according to Chemicals Northwest, and as such development of this technology will contribute to the LCR's ambition to reach net zero carbon by 2040 or sooner.

This project brings together two UK SMEs that are world leaders in PI, process design and small footprint reactor technologies to deliver significantly improved economics in existing and new chemical manufacturing processes. Speciality and fine chemicals sectors are of major significance, providing ‘high-value, knowledge-intensive goods'. The consortium will focus on high pressure biotransformations enabling the production of high quality product in a reduced time frame. The application of integrated process and reactor design will reduce the timescale and the technical risks currently experienced in adapting existing bioprocesses to new targets and in transferring laboratory or pilot scale reactions to full scale manufacturing processes. HiBioPro will prove the advantages of the innovative reactor design and detail the process improvements for the industry sectors.

Thanks to the TSB call for sustainable manufacturing for the process industry, AM Technology and Robinson Brothers Limited have joint forces to investigate a catalytic hydrogenation using the Coflore ACR continuous processing technology. Controlled slurred catalyst feed, enhanced mass transfer and good heat transfer will be applied to obtain a cleaner, more productive and overall cheaper hydrogenation process. During this feasibility study, the reliability of continuous processing in presence of solids will be proven and the expected result is a cut in catalyst and utility consumption.

Three UK technology companies, C-Tech Innovation, Ingenza and AM Technology have collaborated in the BIOCHEMIST project to develop new flow process techniques for bio manufacturing. The project integrated all aspects of bioprocess development from enzyme discovery and catalyst engineering, to process design, through to small footprint manufacturing of high value products. The CofloreTM Agitated Cell Reactor (ACR) is a dynamically mixed plug flow reactor and Coflore Agitated Tube Reactor (ATR) - an industrial tube flow reactor both developed by AMTech have demonstrated superior mixing and process control in bioprocess development starting from simple lab scale batch processes. The BIOCHEMIST project successfully implemented pug flow principles to chiral chemical manufacturing through benchtop plug flow reactors (ACRs); and on to the multi-litre production scale agitated tube reactor (ATR). A synthetic oxidation reaction developed by Ingenza for the production of chiral amino acid catalysed by a series of novel d-amino acid oxidases (DAAO) has been developed from lab to pilot scale process by C-Tech Innovation under batch and continuous conditions, and illustrates how application of the ACR and ATR reactors can facilitate process development by improved process control; ease of scale up; minimizing of interruptions in production; reducing reactor size; and the efficient and economic use of biocatalysts