iChemCabinet - Development and test of an universal, interactive, intelligent laboratory cabinet for handling and dispensing of chemicals from containers with screw caps

Innovative production systems in the field of biotechnology for a sustainable production of active agents and ingredients for the food-, pharmaceutical- and cosmetics-industry rely on a controlled, traceable supply of single chemicals for development- and production-processes.
The storage of the needed chemicals as powders, liquids or solutions takes place in an unclear chemical cabinet e.g. in the respective R&D laboratory. Preparation tasks for buffer- or nutrient medium fabrication are therefore often faulty concerning the chemicals used as well as their concentrations and amounts. Contaminations happen often and the documentation hallmarks error-prone manual tasks. Additionally the best before date of the chemicals is passed often or the supply is low when actually needed. Consequentially a time-delay occures when chemicals have to be re-ordered.
In laboratories of nearly every size but especially with small and middle-sized laboratories there is a growing demand for automated solutions for recurrent, standardized tasks connected with an automated documentation (GMP-compliant) to - on the one hand - process more samples (throughput increase) and - on the other hand - raise efficiency and accuracy as well as to cut cost.

iChemCabinet design — Design study for an automated chemical cabinet with integrated de-capping-station and a dispensing-module.

With a precise technical automation solution for controlled, traceable and timely administration and withdrawal of powders and liquids from a chemical cabinet this demand in the field of experimental preparations can be met. The new device will be an innovative, interactive and cross-linked chemical cabinet that acts as a cyber-physical system (CPS) which does an automated administration of containers with chemicals, locates their current position (sub-project of nevoLAB GmBH) and is capable to dispense powders and liquids with high accuracy after specific user requests from each container (sub-project of TU Dresden, Bioprocess Engineering).

Project funding:

Central Innovation Programme of the Federal Ministry of Economics and Technology (BMWi) through the innovation network "SmartLAB - Intelligent Lab of the Future"

project number: 16KN063727