The Centre for Process Analytics and Control Technology (CPACT) is a unique multidisciplinary Centre formed in July 1997 through the Foresight Challenge initiative.CPACT brings together chemical and process engineers, analytical chemists, control systems engineers, chemometricians, signal processing engineers, and statisticians, from academia and industry, to research solutions to generic problems in process monitoring and control. The research in industry-shaped and provides routes to tangible scientific and technological benefits in process manufacturing.

CPACT addresses the manufacturing challenges being faced by the chemical, biochemical, pharmaceutical, food and materials processing industries through the unique synergy of end-user process manufacturers, analytical vendor companies and control systems solution providers.

CPACT was formed in July 1997 through the Foresight Challenge with an EPSRC/DTI award of £1.34M plus industrial contributions of £690,000 in cash and £1,999,000 in-kind. It involved 3 Universities and 15 member companies. The EPSRC Peer review of CPACT Phase I rated the project as “tending to internationally leading” with particular mention of the “outstanding contributions to research output and staff output”. CPACT Phase II was launched in June 2001 with EPSRC support of £1.254M plus industrial funding of £915,000 in cash and £1,642,000 in-kind from its 18 member companies. During these two phases CPACT also raised and delivered additional research grants of thr order of circa £5M.

CPACT Outputs:

• Established a confidentiality agreement and modus operandi between 3 universities and 18 UK companies. This is almost unique in the UK.
• Delivered 48 research reports, 29 PhD’s and 25 Post Doctoral Researchers, 6 Temporary Assistants and 14 Vacation studentships from the three universities.
• Delivered 10 collaborative research programs to the satisfaction of the industrial sponsors and achieved 5* ratings at Newcastle and 4 at Strathclyde and Hull in RAE 2001.
• Trained 150 Industrialists and academics in the CPACT technologies.
• Initiated and run 6 Annual APACT Conferences with over 600 delegates. This is now the leading conference in the CPACT technologies in Europe.
• Established strong links with CPAC and MCEC in the USA, and top European research groups.
• Managed, with SOCSA, a successful Network (SONAR) delivering two major reports:
  • “The SONAR Demonstration Project - The business case for on-line process analysis”
  • “The SONAR Demonstration Project - The technical case for on-line process analysis”.

Other Research Projects

• Vertical Integration of Product Development and Manufacturing (VERTIGO):
  • Research into faster product and process innovation times for new and modified products; improved responsiveness to market changes; the identification of routes to greater product flexibility; the enhancement of product quality and consistency at reduced costs, and improvements in process robustness
• Control and Scale-up of Batch Crystallisation Processes for Organic Chemical Products (CBBII):
  • {Research into the Control and Scale-up of Batch Crystallisation Processes for Organic Speciality Chemical Products, involving Leeds, Herot-Watt and Newcastle Universities with BNFL, GSK, Syngenta, AstraZeneca, HEL, Bede, Clairet Scientific)
• Grid Based Information Models to Support the Rapid Innovation of High Value Added Chemicals (GOLD), (Newcastle).
• Extending High Throughput Technologies to Chemical Process Development - The automation of mechanism determination, (Newcastle with links to Strathclyde HTT grant).
• Physical and chemical property characterisation in HTT by in-situ analysis and smart data processing (Strathclyde with links to the Newcastle HTT grant).

The Centre's R&D is progressed to the plant evaluation phase. Thereafter the technology is transferred to the vendor companies who are responsible for the commercial exploitation of the technology, thus ensuring the full cycle of technology transfer. CPACT has adopted a policy that ensures that all member companies drive a specific project forward and test the novel methodologies developed on their own process.

CPACT is also an active member of other consortia, for example the Centre for Process Analytical Chemistry (CPAC) University of Washington USA.

Future CPACT
Following a highly successful six years, CPACT has evolved into a third phase with a different membership structure. It is now extending its scope to include the analytical sciences expertise from the School of Chemical Engineering and Analytical Instrumentation at the university of Manchester, the supply chain, modelling, advanced control and optimisation activities from the Centre for Process Systems Engineering at Imperial College, the crystallisation, particle science and technology and tomography expertise from the School of Process, Environmental and Materials Engineering; the Institute of Particle Science and Engineering and Virtual Centre for Industrial Process Tomography at the University of Leeds; and the crystallisation, CFD modelling expertise from the Department of Chemical Engineering at Heriot-Watt alongside their Institute of petroleum. CPACT aims to support the entire Process Industries Supply Chain to enhance its profitability, quality and competitiveness.

Universities:

• Strathclyde: Department of Pure and Applied Chemistry
• Newcastle: School of Chemical Engineering and Advanced Materials
• Hull: Department of Physical Sciences
• Heriot Watt: Chemical Engineering Department and the Institute of Petroleum
• Imperial College London: Centre for Process Systems Engineering
• Leeds: Chemical Engineering and the Institute of Particle Science & Engineering
• Manchester:Department of Chemical Engineering and Analytical Sciences

Member Companies:

• Strathclyde; CPACT has fully instrumented and computer controlled batch reactors for the testing and evaluation of process analytics, reaction monitoring, performance monitoring and process control and optimisation procedures.
• Newcastle; the Responsive Processing (Coulson) Laboratories at Newcastle provide a unique facility for the development and evaluation of a range of novel intensified processing technologies and their monitoring and control. The new Process Development Lab provides access to a Chemspeed accelerator synthesizer, an HEL Reaction Calorimeter with comprehensive instrumentation, a HEL AutoMATE, 130 bar / 3500C with presuurised sampling and a Hiden CATLAB catalysts screening system.
• Leeds; comprehensive comport controlled laboratory facilities exist for crystallisation studies with HEL reactors from 2l to 20l alongside comprehensive on-line analytical instruments including FTIR, NIR, XRD, Turbidity and Image analysis.
• Heriot-Watt; 2l and 20l reactors are equipped with a range of on-line analytical instruments including PIV to validate CFD crystallisation studies. A 250l pilot plant batch crystalliser is also available for scale-up studies.
• Imperial College; the Centre for Process Systems Engineering provides access to …...

CPACT Research Themes:

• Process Analytics:
  • Research and development of at-line, on-line, in-line and non-invasive process analytical procedures based on:
    • NIR, MIR, UV-visible, Raman scattering, Fluorescence, NMR, Microwave, Acoustic, and Mass spectrometry techniques
  • Analyser and Sensor miniaturisation
• Process Chemometrics:
  • Advanced multivariate statistical data analysis and modelling.
  • Process Performance Monitoring and Multivariate Statistical Process Control.
  • Calibration free techniques, curve resolution methodologies
  • Robust modelling and calibration from small data sets; model / calibration transfer.
  • Data Fusion – integrating disparate data forms, spectroscopic and process data.
  • Signal processing - wavelets and wavelet de-noising.
  • Analysis of messy spectroscopic data.
• Process Modelling, Inferential Estimation, Control & Optimisation
  • Inferential estimation, advanced process control and optimisation.
  • Neural network software sensors.
  • Non-linear multivariate statistical modelling and confidence interval estimation.
  • Bayesian state and parameter estimation..
• CPACT Software
  • Data pre-screening toolbox.
  • Multivariate continuous data analysis and modelling toolbox.
  • Multivariate batch data analysis and modelling toolbox.
  • Neural network modelling toolbox
  • Calibration toolbox.