RAB Microfluids – a spin out from the University of Aberdeen

Dr. Rotimi Alabi founded RAB Microfluidics in 2016, which diagnoses early signs of failure in lubricated machinery and therefore prevents equipment failure through its patented microfluidic technology and use of AI. Drawing on his own PhD studies and a decade of research into microfluidics by his supervisor, Dr Stephen Bowden, at the University of Aberdeen, Dr Alabi, has built a company that works to solve the machine reliability and availability challenges faced by businesses across many industries including maritime, energy and manufacturing.  

Microfluidics is a process widely used in life science applications to analyse fluids at the microscale. In the case of RAB Microfluidics, that technique has been applied to heterogenous mixtures such as crude oil. The company is able to offer insights into asset condition management in relevant machinery for a fraction of current costs. The “lab-on-a-chip” technology has made end to end chemical compositional analysis of crude oil possible on the scale of a micrchip, removing the need for large and expensive equipment used in conventional lab work. The automation of previously manual wet chemistry processes has also reduced the processing time of traditional methods from days to minutes.  

RAB –Microfluidics has received over £1.1 million in development funding from various grant-awarding bodies, including £100,000 from the Net Zero Technology Centre and a £90,000 Enterprise Fellowship by the Royal Society of Edinburgh as well as several Innovate UK grant awards. 

Most recently, the company received a £2.2 million equity injection in August from Par Equity, a Scottish early-stage investment firm that invests in innovative technology companies with high growth potential.