The initial stages of chemical process discovery and development are typically performed in a laboratory. At this point, the effort is usually dedicated to obtaining the best reaction performance. The piloting stages will generate the data that define the process limits, which is necessary to design a commercial plant. The studies at these intermediate development stages determine optimum feed composition, possible reactant diluent, separation and purification routes, product quality and impurities, potential safety hazards, catalyst stability, catalyst manufacturing procedures, catalyst cycle length, catalyst poisons, and the effects of mixing, and mass and heat transfer limitations. These data provide the basis for a technical-economic viability assessment. As the process development advances, it is often found that the reaction scheme initially discovered is not the best choice for commercial production due to constraints in commercial units imposed by safety, robustness, and cost. In some cases, the conditions that are chosen for optimum lab scale performance are unworkable on commercial scale. If the constraints imposed by commercial scale-up are taken into consideration when the lab conditions are initially chosen, a lot of time and money can be saved in the more expensive piloting steps. We discuss the scale-up process based on actual experience, in projects that failed, as well as those that succeeded; we highlight the critical parameters that impact scaling-up from micro-scale, to larger scale, and then finally up to full commercial scale.

Challenges of scaling up chemical processes (based on real life experiences)

ACS Spring Meeting 2021

The official archive and repository for all ACS Meetings & Expositions abstracts and select posters or presentations.