About Us

Our journey towards technologies that enable circular chemical engineering.

We are a team of researchers based in The University of Edinburgh who are passionate about creating novel materials in a sustainable manner to innovate separation processes in chemical engineering.

Our Story

The Scale Up Lab was established in November 2016 where we started to explore how the synthesis of microporous adsorbents for carbon capture, desalination, water treatment and resource recovery could be scaled up using continuous flow chemistry. Over the years, this research activity has expanded into replacing fossil-derived feedstocks with plastic waste and using biorenewable solvents to synthesise these sorbents in flow reactors and other continuous manufacturing technologies.

The Team has also used this strategy to transform the sustainability of polymer membrane fabrication. We developed a sustainable additive manufacturing technology to fabricate thin-film composite polymer membranes using biorenewable solvents in a single process. This reduced the time required to make these polymer membranes, from 1-3 days to 20 minutes.

In 2019, the team started to look at developing photo-responsive sorbents for unlocking zero-carbon, low-cost carbon capture, resource recovery and water treatment. This is now the cornerstone of the research conducted in The Scale Up Lab.