Question: what new ideas have you got to update chemistry?

Sebastian Cosgrove answered on 6 Mar 2019:

Practical chemistry actually relies on lots of very old techniques usually, methods that were developed in the 1800s that we still use today to do our chemical reactions in the labs. A lot of these methods are not efficient, and often require a lot of energy to make happen. My work looks at using new methods, mainly something called flow chemistry, to try and improve the way we do chemical reactions. Flow chemistry is what it sounds like – flowing chemical reactions through tubes instead of stirring them in bottles and flasks. Using flow chemistry reactions happen a lot more quickly then in flasks, and we also get much better control over what is happening – this means we can use less energy, therefore making practical chemistry much more efficient and suitable for the future when we need to think about using less energy.