Process Development
Process development is the creation of a chemical manufacturing process to make some product or intermediary.
Before World War II most of this work was done by an individual researcher who would develop a product in the laboratory and then enlarge and refine the process until industrial scale production was achieved. World War II, specifically the Manhattan Project, changed process development from an individual effort to a team effort.
To cite a specific example of how process development might be done today by a professional chemical engineer, we will take the example of a product recovery process. The problem is to take a large solid particle and remove out of specification additives to recover the base material.
- The first step would be a brain-storming session with engineering, pilot plant, and laboratory personnel. First a probable industrial process is identified. This process might be storage, size reduction to increase surface area for additive extraction, additive extraction, solvent extraction from the additive, and solvent recovery from the particles. Even at this stage we can identify further challenges such as fine particle capture, solvent emissions, concentrated additive handling and disposal, and maybe liquid wastes.
- Because none of the problems identified are insurmountable, we can discuss the removal of additive from the particle. We can agree that a small particle is more likely to be recovered than a large one and the solvent needs to be readily available, a good solvent for the additive, not dissolve the particles, and be environmentally friendly.
- The laboratory personnel pick several candidate solvents, grind the solids to several different sizes, and try to leach out the additive in a beaker.
- With these results the team reconvenes and evaluates the full scale process. Specifically the higher boiling point solvent is the best for air emissions, the one that can penetrate the largest grain minimizes the fine particle problem. So with the preliminary data the best guess full scale process is laid out and evaluated for all the original constraints. The total installed cost for a facility is very roughly estimated.
- The propose-test-evaluate process continues so long as a full scale industrial process can be economically built and operated. If problems are encountered then other tactics are considered such as alternate processing steps, co-solvents, or other solvents even though they may be harder to control.
Development times may still be months, or in high need but difficult processes many months, but times are very much compress from the single researcher method and there are fewer dead ends encountered. The process that is eventually facilitized has to meet the technical, environmental, safety, and business needs A reality that has been brought to light by recent management continual improvement practices is that even if the original process/facility is less than perfect, once the process is running, a revenue stream will be generated, and a process of continuous improvement can be applied that corrects deficiencies as identified.
We have been in process engineering and process development for many years and consider it one of our strengths. If you need to consider professional process development, contact us.