A Look at Future Production Concepts in
Chemical Industry
Over the last years,
chemical and pharmaceutical industry companies have been working on two major
production concepts to further improve their production of chemicals, drugs,
materials or biotechnology products: continuous flow and modularized
production. The general goal is to produce faster, with a higher quality and
less waste.
Due to globalized and
volatile markets, reduction of time-to-market is as essential as safe,
resource-efficient and flexible production. The chemical industry is facing an
increasing demand from fast growing and vibrant markets such as China, India or
Brazil (maybe not as strong as expected, but still reasonable) and a trend to
customized specialty and fine chemicals. This leads to high product varieties
which are produced from small amounts to over hundred tons per year.
But what are the
advantages and disadvantages of continuous production processes and modularized
production systems? Are these production concepts really helpful for the whole
industry, or are they only fit to the production of bulk chemicals?
Let’s have a look at
traditional batch processing: Scaling up a batch process is a long-term run and
requires a lot of chemical engineering know-how and calculations as well as
experimental results from lab-scale and pilot plant prototyping. Step by step the
production volume is increased until the final production plant is build. Every
step is difficult, accounts for a high investment and increases time-to-market.
Not forgetting that market foresight has potentially a high deviation rate as
time-to-market is too long.
So, the
continuous-flow and modularized process approaches to overcome the
disadvantages of the batch process and reduce the development time of a
chemical or biotechnological production process from initial idea to market
operation with simultaneous energy and resource efficiency are a new paradigm
in chemical and pharmaceutical industry. It could also be an example for the
agrochemical industry.
Smaller Ecological Footprint
Numerous advantages
are offered by continuous production methods: first of all they have a smaller
ecological footprint, the required equipment is much smaller and more easy to
handle, process cycle times are lower as well as operating costs, maximized
quality control and a higher level of automation coupled with less human interaction
allows for smarter and digitized process control from upcoming trends like the
Internet of Things. You also have to keep in mind that depending on the
produced chemical or biotechnological product the usage of single-use equipment
could be profitable, and overall the need for inventory and storage is much
lower.
For processes which
are susceptible to contamination, like in pharmaceutical drug production,
continuous processes together with real-time monitoring and regular sampling
can easily detect such contaminations and allow for discarding only a small
amount of the product instead of the entire batch.
Another key point of
continuous-flow production is the fact that the process is fully integrated,
meaning the products of one reaction flow into the next through small-volume
pipes. So scientists and engineers in specialty and fine chemical companies can
now use certain kinds of chemical reactions that are not feasible in batch
processes, such as very fast reactions, highly exothermic reactions,
safety-relevant conversions like nitrations or those which require specific
light- or UV-impulse or high temperatures. This could open a completely new
field of chemicals and drugs.
Only a Question of Time
According to fine
chemical and pharmaceutical companies, it seems that it is only a question of
time until for example all major pharmaceutical drug producers have
commercial-scale continuous-manufacturing facilities.
For higher outputs
which may be needed in specialty chemical industry, a single micro- or
milli-structured reaction system sometimes doesn’t fit. But modularized plant
systems, working with continuous manufacturing methods as key enablers, allow a
quick reaction to increasing or decreasing market demands and are very suitable
for the chemical process industry. The target behind modular plant systems is
to use standard modules for continuous manufacturing. Therefore, modules and
components must be integrated and multi-scalable to really accelerate modeling
and process design.
By using continuous
manufacturing laboratory equipment very similar to the final process equipment,
the detailed engineering of the final production facility can be already
realized with the chosen laboratory plant structure. The production facility is
then assembled from pre-configured modules. The wise combination of these
components into modules and the associated integrated information modeling from
the process design to the initial operation are essential cross-cutting
activities. They reduce on the one hand throughput times and on the other hand
optimize the energy efficiency of the process.
Separation and Other Hardware Modules are
Needed
To realize an
efficient modular plant system, the mentioned integrated and multi-scalable
reaction, separation and other hardware modules are needed. Only with these
modules and components the transfer of laboratory reactions directly into mass
production would be possible, circumventing pilot projects and time-consuming
adjustments of the chemical recipe. The development of scalable components
supports the concurrent development of appropriate planning and hardware
modules for recurring process steps and frequently used components (such as
pumps, columns, reactors, infrastructure, etc.). These modules must be
integrated into a planning tool that supports the entire design process from
early process development in the laboratory up to the 3-D plant model.
The modularization of
key components such as columns and pumps as well as the data integration and
data management through various phases in the plant design cycle contributes
significantly to an increased efficiency and reduced time-to-market as well as
allows for industry-wide use.
Furthermore, models of
automotive industry supply chains can be adapted, which offer great potential
for synergies and competitive advantages for specialty and fine chemicals
companies. So, the continuous-manufacturing and modularized plant system
approach could lead to produce cost-effectively over the long term and this
right from day one, just by offering the optimal balance between investments
and operating costs as well as future updates — the future standard in chemical
process industry?
http://www.process-worldwide.com/a-look-at-future-production-concepts-in-chemical-industry-a-523763/index2.html
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