Process Do's and Don'ts

Session Chair & Co-Chair:

• Noel Sutton, Amway Corporation
• Barry Perlmutter, BHS-Filtration Inc.

Session Description:

The goal of scale-up is to identify & develop a process that will successfully produce a desired product when manufactured at a commercial scale.  To successfully move from the small scale to the large, one must understand how size changes impact a number of physical & chemical phenomena.  This session will focus on things that should be done, and avoided, to prevent costly errors and delays during process development.

Schedule: 

Mixing Is Empirical

Empirical means: relying upon or derived from observation or experiment.  The reasons for process development studies are the observations or experiments necessary to decide the effects of mixing on an application.  Mixing studies can be conducted in the laboratory, pilot plant, or production.  Each level of mixing study has its problems and benefits.  The objectives of these studies are the determination of mixing limitations and the factors that influence those limits.  Studies at different mixing conditions, as defined by mixer speed and impeller diameter or type, help establish limits and scale-up criteria.  Success depends on correct interpretation of empirical results.

Oil & Gas Process Separation Scale-Up Part 1: Sour Water and Sour Gas              

In most Oil & Gas processing facilities, sour water and sour gas are two important streams that need to be treated for sulphur-related contaminants removal and recovery. These unwanted materials originate in the many stages of an Oil & Gas processing facility. This paper will discuss the various streams involved and how small scale equipment is related to equipment scale-up designs, and actual process efficiency increase. Real cases from past jobs will be presented.

Successful Scale-up via Simulation of Production Vessels under Lab Conditions using PAT and Thermal Analysis

In today’s world, the chemical and pharmaceutical industries face major challenges including globalization, environmental and safety regulations, shortening product life cycle and increased time and cost pressure for commercial releases. Breakthroughs in process operations and modeling are necessary to achieve energy and material efficiency gains supporting shorter development and scale up times. Those breakthroughs are made possible in part by the lab and plant scale use of process analytical technologies (PAT) and reactor systems optimally designed for real time in situ process monitoring and accurate control of processes. For more than twenty five years the RC1e reaction calorimeter has been the golden standard for process safety and characterization studies at lab scale. Similarly, ATR-FTIR has become a mainstream PAT used by thousands of engineers and chemists around the world thanks to the success in the development of the well-known ReactIR technology. Over the past five years, METTLER TOLEDO has focused its research and development effort and investment around innovative and state-of-the-art technologies. For example,

• Real time calorimetry (RTCal),
• Expanded system platform for calorimetry investigation (volume, vessel, mixing options),
• Plug-and-play ReactIR instrument,
• Advanced chemometrics and prediction algorithm (mixing, kinetics, process safety, quantitative modeling and characterization)

They have now become the norm in R&D academic and industry labs. Several case studies will presented including for example,

• Automated control of dosing rate at lab scale according to plant cooling capabilities using RTCal and advanced predictive models
• Rapid process optimization using lab scale calorimetry, automation, and numerical simulation of thermal and mixing behavior of industrial reactors
• In-silico optimization of dosing rate at plant scale based on a kinetic model developed using quantitative ATR-FTIR results
• Qualitative use of reaction heat on a small scale to screen experimental conditions and optimization reaction conditions
• Predictive modeling and assessment of process safety profile (primary and secondary reactions) based on adiabatic and isothermal calorimetry experiments using advanced software algorithm (iC Safety).