TECH SPECIAL.............Lessons learned in commercial scale-up of new chemical processes (6)

Lessons learned in commercial scale-up of new chemical processes (6) 

Continuous engineering

Engineering should be part of the commercialization effort; this is the essence of the scale-up/scale-down approach. The engineer(s) leading this effort must have the necessary experience and skills to conceptualize the entire plant with a high level of realism, starting from day one, with occasional reassessments to follow. Good engineers can identify gaps in research knowledge early on and ask R&D to obtain the solutions before the gaps become a critical path to pilot or commercial design efforts. If early efforts show viable economics, then it is highly unlikely that the final results at the commercialization stage will be different. The converse is also true. An early negative result from engineering may not be insurmountable if viewed as a challenge for improvement. For example, a negative result can be turned positive with a small increase in reactor yield, which can then guide further research.

In another example, a major producer invented a process to produce a certain compound in high global demand. The front and back ends of this new process were fairly standard and easy to estimate. The initial concept for the “reactor” made the process economically unattractive. The consultant started with the published market price of the product, deducted required margins and variable costs, and came up with a contribution to the selling pricedue to depreciation of capital. The maximum permissible total plant cost was estimated from these calculations.

Deducting the known cost of the balance of the plant yielded the required “imputed” cost for the reactor. The client’s team then worked with alternate concepts to see if the imputed cost was achievable. The technology is now in the advanced stages of demonstration on a large scale, with a reactor concept quite different from the initial one.

CONTINUES

Jazayeri, B., Reacxion http://www.hydrocarbonprocessing.com/magazine/2016/october-2016/process-control-and-instrumentation/lessons-learned-in-commercial-scale-up-of-new-chemical-processes