Economic optimization, plant-scale

In this chapter we have advocated the use of online model-based optimization for the automatic control of SMB plants. This approach has the advantage that the process is automatically operated at its economic optimum while meeting all relevant constraints on purities and flow rates. Application to a pilot-plant-scale reactive SMB process for glucose isomerization showed that implementation at a real plant is feasible - the requirements for additional hardware are moderate (a high-level PC and online concentration measurements in the recycle line). The experiments confirmed the excellent properties of the proposed control scheme. The scheme is extremely versatile, and the cost function and constraints can easily be adapted to any specific separation task. 

As with all of die processes described, drese are first studied in detail in the laboratoty with an industrial application as dre objective. Those processes which pass the criterion of economic potential are used in a pilot plant smdy, and dretr, if successful, at the production level which must be optimized. The materials which are produced are mainly, in the present instance, for application in the elecU onics industry where relatively high costs are acceptable. It will be seen drat the simple kinetic theory of gases is adequate to account for dre rates of these processes, and to indicate the ways in which production may be optimized on dre industrial scale. 

The conversion of 2 to 3 was optimized at full scale in the VRT reactor. In addition to confirming the productivity, safety, product quality, and economic benefit of the process, the robustness of the process was also demonstrated. Finally, this pilot study provided the basis for a full-scale commercial manufacturing design specification. Having fixed the optimum residence time, the process was then transferred into a plant Fixed Residence Time (FRT) cyanation reactor which employed a fixed length of jacketed static mixer for commercial manufacture. This FRT was capable of producing 300 metric tonnes per year of 3, with the same purified step yield of 80% that was achieved in the laboratory capillary reactor. 

In plant cell cultures, shake flask culture is an indispensable stage of cultivation. Investigations in a shake flask are very essential and critical to bioprocess scale-up and optimization. We have developed a simple and convenient technique based on the principle of the Warburg manometric method to measure 02 uptake rate (OUR) and C02 evolution rate (CER) of suspended cells in a shake flask culture. This technique has been successfully applied to suspension cultures of Panax notoginseng cells, and some important bioprocess parameters, such as OUR, CER, respiratory quotient (RQ), SOUR and specific CER (SCER), were quantitatively obtained [99]. As long as the environment temperature is strictly controlled to within an error of 0.1 °C, the measuring system is accurate and reproducible, is easy to operate, is economical, and is also able to treat many samples simultaneously. 

Vinyl chloride monomer (VCM) is one of the leading chemicals used mainly for manufacturing polyvinyl chloride (PVC). The PVC worldwide production capacity in 2005 was of about 35 million tons per year, with an annual growth of about 3%, placed after polyolefines but before styrene polymers. In the 1990s the largest plant in the USA had a capacity of about 635 ktons [1], but today there are several plants over one million tons. At this scale even incremental improvements in technology have a significant economic impact. Computer simulation, process optimization and advanced computer-control techniques play a determinant role. 

This optimization is achieved by exploiting to the utmost the correlations established during definition of the initial catalytic formulas It should not only take into account the problems raised by the study of use but also the need for a simple and economical preparation that can be expanded to industrial scale Therefore, the problems of extrapolating to industrial scale the various unit operations perfected in the laboratory have to be resolved in the pilot plant This study consists of... 

The time and money invested in model parameter determination has to be in balance with the aim of a certain chromatographic separation. Very often, only sample products are needed for further studies with the pure substances and, to evaluate a separation process, only a few milligrams of the feed mixture are available. Additionally, time is an important factor and quick and dirty /short-cut methods will be applied to find conservative operating parameter values for a safe separation. A quite different situation is the design of commercial large-scale production plants. Here process economics come to the fore. Therefore, precise parameters are necessary for process optimization. As some parameters may change during operation, repeated determination may be necessary to reestablish optimal production. 

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