Production flow, multipurpose plant

The material balance is presented on a block flow sheet so that the reader can graphically visualize what is happening. An example is given in Figure 4E- 1. Each major operation appears as a block. No attempt is made to identify the specific pieces of equipment or to size them. The blocks are interconnected with flow lines, which indicate for each substance where it enters the process, what path it follows, and where it is eventually discharged. These flow lines are keyed to a chart that gives the composition and amount of each stream in the form of a unit ratio material balance. A material balance should be given for each product made by a multipurpose plant. 

Another decision for the design engineer is the selection of the operation mode, whereby he can choose between the single- and cascade-mode of operation. In principle this is valid for multipurpose plants of medium scale, such as plants to extract spices and/or herbs. Fig. 8.1-6 gives data on the different production costs for a plant with a total extraction volume of 600 1, operated in different modes, but with the same capacity. The investigation is based on equal batch times (in our case 4 hours), equal mass-flow per kg of raw material and, of course, equal extraction- and separation conditions. 

Presently, pharmaceuticals are produced batchwise in multipurpose plants. For different reasons increasingly dedicated mono-production plants [25] are recommended. The integration of microreaction concepts into existing production plants is still ongoing. Continuous flow reactions are less flexible than batch reactions, particularly during workup steps such as phase separations, crystallizations and other operations. 

Comparison ofthe Plant Concepts To be able to compare the pipeless plant concept with the existing multipurpose batch plant, a reference plant was modelled using PPSiM. In the existing plant three conventional batch mixers work in a shifted parallel fashion. The three batch mixers were modelled by three stations and equipped with all technical functions necessary for the production of all recipes. Therefore each batch could be processed at one of the stations and the vessel transfers were limited to the transportation of empty or loaded vessels. All the other parameters of the model, e.g., charging mass flows, the durations of vessel cleanings and the recipes remained unchanged. 

Figure 29.2 shows a typical pilot plant for production of field trial compounds. Fig. 29.3 shows a multipurpose small-scale production facility, and a typical flow diagram for the preparation of phorate is presented in Fig. 29.4. Methods of preparation for many different agrochemicals can be found in the references.

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