C2I 2020: COVID-19 response shortlist: Supply and demand

Partners: Imperial College Essential Staff Team, Department of Chemical Engineering, with Sipsmith London

Alongside pasta and toilet roll, one of the first things to disappear from supermarket shelves in the early days of the pandemic was hand sanitiser. What had been a low-cost, freely available product, became a highly prized and overpriced commodity practically overnight. As consumers scrambled to stock up on the antibacterial gel, hospitals and care homes also began to feel the pinch, struggling to provide staff with an essential tool for preventing COVID transmission.

In response to the shortage and an emergency appeal from the Imperial College Healthcare NHS Trust, a small team of volunteers from Imperial’s chemical engineering department came together to find a solution, sourcing feedstocks for hand sanitiser and establishing a production line. Initially, the team relied on donations of excess ingredients from various other Imperial departments, converting existing undergraduate teaching laboratories into the main production area to manufacture the gel. Once news of the project got out, London gin distillery Sipsmiths got in touch and pledged to provide 10,000 litres of ethanol, a key base component for the production of hand sanitiser.