Rapid Process Scale-up through Innovative Design Methodologies

Rapid Process Scale-Up Through Innovative Design Methodologies

John Prindle¹, Richard Doctor¹, Aspi Kolah², Carl Lira², Dennis Miller², and C.B. Panchal¹

 

¹E3tec Service, LLC, Clarksville, MD 21029, USA

 

²Department of Chemical Engineering and Materials Science,
Michigan State University, East Lansing, Michigan 48824, USA

Abstract

Scale-up of chemical processes is an expensive, time-consuming component on the path to commercialization.  While many new lab-scale technologies have been created to improve specific aspects of scale-up, additional improvements can be achieved by making detailed performance prediction tools an integral part of the process development.  This integration should be seamless and is particularly necessary when scaling up a multiphase reaction system or systems involving process intensification.

Questions involving commercial process robustness and sensitivity to operation/feed parameters are compounded when process units, such as distillation and reactors, are integrated as part of process intensification.  Conservative approaches dictate the need to move incrementally from lab-scale to small pilot-scale to large pilot-scale and, then finally, to commercialization, involving tests at each stage.  Even with this conservative approach, design uncertainties persist going from one step to the next.  Seamless integration of detailed modeling tools and novel lab-scale technologies can allow the elimination of one or more of these scales and/or reduce design uncertainties, while simultaneously focusing efforts at the remaining scales to obtain only those data required for validating the design tools.  This over-arching methodology increases the speed to commercialization and can lead to the development of innovative, reliable continuous processes where conventional scale-up approaches would point toward batch.

Our presentation will discuss efforts in developing and applying detailed performance prediction tools and integrating them with novel experimental techniques during the scale-up process to rapidly identify regions in the operating space where efficient, robust commercial operation can be achieved.  Our particular focus is on Heat-Integrated Reactive Distillation (HIRD) with the incorporation of side-reactors to provide further operation flexibility.  Examples will be presented for the scale-up of a continuous HIRD process with and without side-reactors for the production of tri-ethyl citrate from citric acid and ethanol.