Right first time in fine-chemical process scale-up

Abstract

Bringing a product to plant and market quickly requires a “Right First Time in (Fine-Chemical) Process Scale-up” performance of chemists and chemical engineers. This book teaches how to bring these professionals to a more effective and interactive level and how to bridge the gap between scales. The key to success is avoiding scale-up problems, but how to do that efficiently now and on the spot applying years of industrial experience? The author has made available to the reader 240 real-life examples, collected over many years, and analysed them answering three highly relevant questions: (a) what was the primary cause of the initial failure in scale-up, (b) what was the solution, and (c) how could the incident have been avoided in the early stages of process development? Based on the answers of the last question, a checklist was defined for an intense and productive collaboration between the chemists and chemical engineers. In addition, lab-protocols were defined to bring the challenging large-scale world in a lab-environment in a representative way. Key features: a. provides a general introduction to the scene of fine-chemical process development. b. identifies the challenges in process development c. discusses the numerous challenges that have to be met during process scale-up d. presents the 240 scale-up incidents following the lab-procedure, the larger scale result, a review discussion on the corrective measures and the final result e. analyses the primary causes and historic solutions of the incidents f. defines the checklist and the lab-protocols for the relevant unit operations. In the experience of the author, collaborating with many colleagues to develop the checklist and lab-protocols for a few years, a point was rapidly reached where scale-up of a seven-step process to plant level was realised eliminating the pilot plant and without any significant incidents, so right the first time!