Research environment, chemical process

Process Hazard Review in a Chemical Research Environment... 

Pressure-relieving systems are unique compared with other systems within a chemical plant hopefully they will never need to operate, but when they do, they must do so flawlessly. Other systems, such as extraction and distillation systems, usually evolve to their optimum performance and reliability. This evolution requires creativity, practical knowledge, hard work, time, and the cooperative efforts of the plant, design, and process engineers. This same effort and creativity is essential when developing relief systems however, in this case the relief system development must be optimally designed and demonstrated within a research environment before the plant start-up. 

However, under dry-weather conditions that may occur around 95% of the time in many countries, chemical and biological sewer processes may exert pronounced effects on sewer performance and on the interaction between the sewer and subsequent treatment processes. Possibly, because researchers and operators interests have been devoted to wet-weather conditions, the biological and chemical performances of a sewer, i.e., the sewer as a chemical and biological reactor, have not been of great concern. It is, however, apparent that the sewer cannot be neglected as a chemical and biological process system. These processes may have impacts on the sewer itself, the treatment plant, the environment and the humans in direct or indirect contact with the sewer. 

A lot of research about the metabolism of PPCPs in clinical practice has been conducted under the auspices of pharmacology. As alluded to above, drug metabolism in the body results in the breakdown of the compound into metabolites that are chemically simpler, just like what chemical and biological processes attain in the environment. When such breakdown occurs in the environment, it is typically referred to as degradation. Initial steps in the degradation process in the environment also involves modification of the active sites (similar to phase I processes in our bodies) but... 

Many manufacturers, e.g. Cellular Process Chemistry, CPC GmbH, Mainz, Microglas Chemtec, Mainz, Ehrfeld Mikrotechnik and the Fraunhofer initiative FAMOS [17-22], are currently working on miniaturized reaction systems. Most of these systems are available on the market or can be purchased on request Common to all is the endeavor to provide complete systems equipped with a chemical environment which allows one to perform certain chemical reactions without any additional equipment. Changeable parts and optional deliverable equipment open up a way to have a flexible chemical laboratory on the desk. Each manufacturer addresses different customers, i.e. chemical research, pharmaceutical drug synthesis or education. 

As one can see from the above discussion, establishing correlation between bench-scale flammability and cable flame tests is a difficult task because of complicated chemical and physical processes involved in the burning and combustion of polymer materials and cables. Much research is still needed to understand fundamental processes governing the flaming combustion of wire and cable compounds in actual cable designs and cable bundles in a given environment. 

The first example presents a typical process from our research environment, where a chemical synthesis is transferred from development to production. In this situation validation of the chemical process is performed throughout, including variations of process parameters for intermediates that are not isolated. For these intermediates a pre-selected analytical method is normally... 

The most difficult decision in the research environment is when to conduct a Process Hazards Review. A PHR certainly need not be held for a laboratory-scale experiment conducted in a chemical fume hood following a documented procedure - this is the one end of the spectrum. At the other end, a PHR must be held on a semiworks operation, that will be running around the clock, involving drum quantities of materials. It is in the scale in between that a decision is more difficult. The Du Pont... 

It is commonly recognized by researchers in this field that the mechanical properties of PPy s vary widely from strength and tenacity to extreme brittleness. Consequently, it is necessary to understand how the mechanical properties are affected by the chemical structure, the processing conditions, and the conditions of use (service environment). The ultimate aim is to develop and understand causal relationships between the structure of the PPy and the mechanical properties. Such relationships would enable the deliberate manipulation of the structure (e.g., by controlling the processing conditions) to produce desired mechanical properties. 

In the previous chapters we discussed various aspects of chemical and biological activity in fluid flows presenting certain classes of dynamical behavior that can be described by reaction-diffusion-advection equations and analyzed using dynamical systems approaches. However, there are many research areas of chemical or biological processes taking place in fluid environments that were not covered in the previous chapters. Here we briefly discuss some of these areas and point the reader to the relevant literature for further reading. Apart from classical well-studied topics, here we also focus on more recent developments and active areas of current research. 

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