J. Cihonski and G. Dolbear

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The concept of Process Intensification (PI) is largely credited to Professor Colin Ramshaw, University of New Castle Upon Tyne. Ramshaw’s approach initially focused on the ability to significantly improve mass transfer related processes such as chemical reactions and separations to reduce reactor size by using high gravity processing fields such as centrifugal force. This approach led to the development of the Spinning Disk and HiGee (Rotating Packed Bed) reactors. Related to PI is the concept of reactive mixing (Bourne, 2003), which considers the consequences of bringing reactants together at different mixing scales and how this can influence the reaction environment, rate, conversion and selectivity. Although this reactive mixing concept was initially developed using stirred tank reactor principles, it has been expanded to provide insight into a number of mixing devices for process improvement and PI. The application of PI to chemicals and materials processing can have broad technical and economic impact, ranging from large volume petroleum scale processes to nano-scale pharmaceutical applications. PI is also considered to be an enabling tool for green and sustainable opportunities.

Process Intensification (PI) is a broad topic, too broad to address in depth in this short introduction. Our goal is to provide sufficient information and insight to permit a chemist to understand the rudiments of PI and to determine if PI is a technically viable option for his or her application. Since the chemist is usually the first to evaluate potential process chemistry, it is important to think about mixing and processing options early on. In the absence of early consideration of PI, process engineers tend to choose either a stirred tank reactor (STR) or a plug flow reactor (PFT) because these systems have a long history of successful commercial use and there is a high level of technical understanding and comfort. This conservative approach can be an economic mistake that can result in long-term higher process costs.

In this document we will define PI, discuss some of the more significant PI reactor equipment options for chemicals synthesis, provide chemical and material processing examples, and offer some insight and considerations into the potential applicability and benefits of PI. We will not specifically address the application of PI to separation issues although this is a viable application area. We will also ignore engineering related issues. However, Hessel, et al. (2003) and Keil (2007) address both of these topics.

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