As an IT guy, I am wondering why this is still a mostly manual and rather dangerous process. Surely programmable machines can be built to process reagents in a safe and flexible way?
I am chemical engineer and in my studies there was no programming and algorithm training at all (we did tiny bit of Scilab to solve some systems of equations but that’s all!).
Chemists in general (beyond theoretical and some open-minded exeptions) don’t program and don’t want to program. Synthetic/organic chemist still perceive synthesis as form of “art” ;) Therefore it would require huge shift in the mentality.
It is going to happen but not easily and and later than it could for social reasons :(
That is a very good question. In my PhD I built, among other things, a very primitive parallel stirring system in order to speed up the synthesis of test batches. Although a very crude device, there was tons of stuff that I needed to optimize.
There are many steps in the practical work that is chemical synthesis. It might be removing air, adding reagents in different elemental states, cooling/heating/keeping and certain temperature, observing the reaction, taking aliquots, terminating reaction, and the many steps of purification.
I'd argue that while automation is possible to a certain degree (continuous reactor systems are the most the most interesting IMHO), the resulting mashines are always problem (reagent, reaction, etc) specific. And here lies the problem.
Besides, cleaning everything is very machine unfriendly.
The yields are quite bad though AFAICT.
Pretty much all chemistry is some sequence of the above.