AT A time when rising energy costs, stricter environmental standards and international competition are forcing the European chemical industry to update its methods, a new technology offers the possibility of activating a chemical reaction in a microreactor without a furnace or the extreme conditions required by traditional chemistry.

A large share of industrial processes still rely on decades-old technologies. These often require high temperatures and pressures, metal catalysts or solvents whose economic and environmental costs are becoming increasingly difficult to justify.

In this context, French deeptech firm Plaskimia has developed a platform capable of designing, testing, optimising and industrialising new processes through a modular, electrified, data-driven architecture. 

Intended for applications such as the development of new synthetic routes for fine chemicals, pharmaceuticals and fluorinated compounds, together with ingredients for fragrances and cosmetics, the new platform is "capable of accelerating the design of more resource-efficient, safer and more competitive processes", said the company’s CEO Laurent Boitard.

Learning from every reaction

The platform is built on two complementary components. The first, PlasmaFlow, is continuous-flow plasma chemistry. It circulates gases and liquids through reactors where cold plasma generates reactive chemical species capable of triggering the desired reaction. Depending on the application, this approach makes it possible, at ambient pressure, to limit the use of certain metal catalysts and facilitate scale-up, from the laboratory to initial industrial pilots.

The second, PlasmAI, is the platform’s learning engine. Each experiment feeds a proprietary database that brings together reaction parameters, analytical results and the performance achieved. These data then feed artificial intelligence models capable of proposing new experimental conditions, optimising existing reactions and exploring new synthetic routes. This architecture turns laboratory know-how into a reproducible, controllable process ready for industrialisation.

Helping reduce emissions 

By replacing part of the thermal energy traditionally used with precisely controlled electrical energy, Plaskimia is part of the movement to electrify the chemical industry. Its platform makes it possible to reduce energy consumption, limit the use of solvents and catalysts, improve operational safety thanks to very small reaction volumes and shorten development cycles. Depending on the processes studied by the company, CO₂ emission reductions can reach up to 80% in certain use cases.

Already participating in several industrial partnerships, Plaskimia is leveraging more than a decade of research conducted at Chimie Paris-PSL as the basis for its new platform. Since 2019, the laboratory has worked with Sanofi to explore the potential of plasma chemistry for medicinal chemistry. 

"Plasma is known as the fourth state of matter, after solids, liquids and gases. It is found in lightning and at the heart of stars. For thirteen years, we have learned to channel its reactivity, once considered too aggressive for industrial chemistry, until we could make it as precise and reproducible as a conventional laboratory reaction," said Michael Tatoulian, CSO and co-founder of Plaskimia, adding that it will open "the way to a new generation of chemical processes".

For more information: 

www.plaskimia.com