Christianto Wibowo

An integrative approach to product development—A skin-care cream

Abstract An integrative approach, involving marketing and management issues on the business side, and product design and prototyping on the technical side, is proposed for the development of chemical-based products. For the former, objective-time chart, RAT2IO modules and workflow diagrams are used for project management. For the latter, the integration of experiments, modeling and synthesis expedites product conceptualization and prototyping. Tasks for which chemical engineers are expected to play a key or a supporting role are discussed. An industrial application – the development of a skin-care cream is described alongside the procedure in order to illustrate the myriad issues in product development. In addition to the traditional engineering problems such as process and equipment design, product characterization, performance evaluation, and stability tests are also included as an integral part of this approach.

Development of natural product manufacturing processes: Phytochemicals

Many phytochemicals are high-value-added chemicals used as ingredients in foods, cosmetics and pharmaceuticals. To meet an increasing demand for shorter time and reduced cost in developing their manufacturing processes, a systematic procedure is developed for generating flowsheet alternatives that transform the harvested plants into desired products. In the first step, the product is specified and the feed is characterized. This is followed by the selection of a product recovery technique to recover the target compounds. In the third step, flowsheet alternatives are constructed by selecting unit operations and equipment for the feed preparation, product recovery, product purification and finishing steps. Operating conditions of the selected equipment units are properly assigned in the next step. Finally, flowsheet alternatives are evaluated using equipment models, cost information and feasibility criteria. Heuristics are provided throughout the steps to aid the decision-making. The procedure is illustratedusing two industrial examples: the manufacture of carnosic acid and isoflavones.

Synthesis of crystallization processes for systems involving solid solutions

Abstract This article focuses on the synthesis and design of crystallization-based separation processes for systems involving solid solution in the presence of a solvent. A generic process consisting of two major parts: fractionation to obtain streams that are rich in a desired product and purification to get the final product with the desired purity has been developed. Solid–liquid equilibrium (SLE) phase diagrams and distribution diagrams are used in designing the flowsheet and determination of operating conditions. Various examples are presented to illustrate the use of this approach for different separation objectives and phase behaviors.

Beyond process design: The emergence of a process development focus

This article suggests that process development, consisting of process research and innovation, pilot plant, technology transfer and manufacturing, will play a key role in the evolution of chemical engineering as a profession. By integrating science, engineering and management with a multiscale approach, process development helps break down artificial barriers, leading to performance optimization from an enterprise-wide perspective.

Chapter 8 - Product-centered Process Synthesis and Development: Detergents

This chapter discusses product-centered process synthesis and development. Detergent products, including dishwashing liquids and laundry detergents constitute a significant portion of the household and personal care markets. Contrary to the commodity chemical business, the key to win in the specialty products market does not lie in squeezing out profits by means of economies of scale or process optimization. Rather, it lies in the ability for fast new product launches to capture the largest market share as soon as possible. The procedure consists of three steps: (1) the first step is to identify all the desired product quality factors or attributes for the new product. (2) The selection of the appropriate product form and microstructure, a stable surfactant system with the right performance based on phase behavior, and the appropriate active ingredients to realize those quality factors previously identified. (3) Finally, the process flowsheet is created with the equipment units and process operating conditions determined.

Advances in chemical product design

Abstract The nature of chemical product design problems is diverse and multidisciplinary. It involves many design issues such as project management, market study, product design, process design, and economic analysis for better organizing the product design project and achieving better products. This article provides an overview of chemical product design with a multidisciplinary hierarchical framework including all the design issues and tasks. Each of the design issues and tasks are introduced and discussed, methods and tools are summarized and compared, challenges and perspectives are presented to help the chemical product design researchers on finding more novel, innovative and sustainable products, by the combined effort from academia and industry to develop a systematic generic framework, and tools including product simulator, process simulator, database manager, modeling tool, and templates for design problems.

Workflow management in chemical process development

Publisher Summary This chapter discusses the concept of workflow management in chemical process development, in which the numerous tasks that need to be performed in process development are identified and broken down into generic activities. The activities are organized in a workflow architecture that supports iterative, modular, and concurrent development. Appropriate tools are selected and templates for expressing and documenting information are proposed, to enhance communication among stakeholders and expedite future development projects. An example focusing on reaction and crystallization steps are also presented in the chapter to illustrate this framework. This chapter proposes a framework for devising and managing workflows for chemical process development, which is applicable for pharmaceutical and fine chemical processes as well as for commodity chemicals. Clearly, the most suitable workflow for executing a project depends on many factors, including the nature of the project itself, as well as the company situation.

Fouling Monitoring in Thermosiphon Reboiler

A method to monitor the fouling resistance of a heat exchanger, especially the thermosiphon reboiler, is presented. The historical hourly data of reboiler and distillation column are used to analyze fouling factor. The initial value of overall heat transfer coefficient and the current overall heat transfer coefficient are needed to calculate fouling resistance. Since the initial heat transfer coefficient is not constant but is affected by operating conditions such as shell/tube flow rate and temperature, a relationship between initial heat transfer coefficient and these operating conditions has to be developed to calculate the fouling factor. However, sometimes important data such as tube-side flow, inlet/outlet temperature of hot/cold fluid, and liquid level in shell/tube, which are needed to bring out the fouling condition of equipment, are missing. With such insufficient information, the fouling behavior can be analyzed by building a new equation based on measurable data. Dimensional analysis determines the structure of the function; parameters of each term are obtainable using short-term plant data after cleaning, assuming that there is no fouling during this period. As it is not easy to measure actual fouling factor temporal change in the heat exchanger tube, the calculated fouling resistance is compared with the relative amount of solid material removed from the equipment during cleaning, and it is evaluated qualitatively. The comparison shows good agreement. In addition, the evolution of the fouling resistance of some thermosiphon reboilers over a period of a few months or even years can be matched using this model.

Integrated approach to crystallization process design for fine chemicals and pharmaceuticals

Abstract Designing a crystallization process that can recover the right product with a reasonably high yield and sufficiently high purity is often a key task in ensuring overall process feasibility in the fine chemical and pharmaceutical industry. An integrated approach for crystallization process design which combines synthesis with modeling and experimental activities is presented. By first modeling the thermodynamic behavior of the system, feasible operating regions and the need for further experimental verification can be identified. Kinetics and mass transfer effects are considered next. Modeling of phase behavior and relevant downstream operations helps to design experiments and organize the results in a meaningful way, and more importantly, points to the right direction as to what should be done next, thereby minimizing the required time, effort, and cost for developing the process.

A novel software tool for crystallization process development

Abstract A new software application has been developed to assist both chemists and chemical engineers in the early stage of crystallization process development. The software enables the users to quickly identify feasible process alternatives through generation of solid-liquid equilibrium phase diagrams. It provides a convenient platform to integrate modeling, experimental, and synthesis activities involved in the crystallization process development workflow. Packaged as a collection of tools, it can accommodate various needs in a flexible manner instead of following a rigid workflow. An example illustrates the use of the software in a typical crystallization process development project.