Chemical manufacturing processes integration

Qiemical and Petrochemical Industries. Distillation is one of the fundamental unit operations of chemical engineering and is an integral part of many chemical manufacturing processes. Modern industrial chemistry in the twentieth century was based on the numerous products obtainable from petrochemicals, especially when thermal and catalytic cracking is applied. Industrial distillations are performed in lai e, vertical distillation towers that are a common sight at chemical and petrochemical plants and petroleum refineries. These range from about 2 to 36 feet in diameter and 20 to 200 feet or more in height Chemical reaction and separation can be combined in a process called reactive distillation, where the removal of a volatile product is used to shift the equilibrium toward completion. 

Chemical Manufacturers Association, Questions of Quality, Integrating Process Safety and Total Quality A Roadmap, Toolguide Toolbox, 1995. 

Integrating individual chemical process steps used in the manufacture of electronic, photonic, and recording materials and devices. This is a key to boosting the yield, throughput, and reliability of overall manufacturing processes. 

Atomie and molecular studies of catalysts Chemical processing in the manufacture of integrated circuits Studies of the dynamics of suspensions and microstructured fluids Improving the rate and capacity of separations equipment... 

Despite all the measures discussed above, chemicals manufacture will always involve some risk and will always rely to some extent on equipment integrity and appropriate operation. Limitation is the process of minimizing the effects of failure (of equipment or people) or an incident,... 

As mentioned earlier, a major cause of high costs in fine chemicals manufacturing is the complexity of the processes. Hence, the key to more economical processes is reduction of the number of unit operations by judicious process integration. This pertains to the successful integration of, for example, chemical and biocatalytic steps, or of reaction steps with (catalyst) separations. A recurring problem in the batch-wise production of fine chemicals is the (perceived) necessity for solvent switches from one reaction step to another or from the reaction to the product separation. Process simplification, e.g. by integration of reaction and separation steps into a single unit operation, will provide obvious economic and environmental benefits. Examples include catalytic distillation, and the use of (catalytic) membranes to facilitate separation of products from catalysts. 

---