Chemical Process Strategies to Increase Product Throughput

A distinction needs to be made between improving the quality of the product produced by a particular chemical process and the simpler need to improve the throughput from a particular plant using the same reaction steps. When questions of throughput are directed back to process chemists, they often, improperly, think about changes in the chemical process. It is efficiencies in the unit operations that need to be looked at first and usually exclusively. The most common places to save time and increase throughput accordingly are:

1.     Reactor preparation time

2.     Partial cleaning vs full cleaning

3.     Vacuum concentration vs atmospheric distillation

4.     Modified intermediate washing to reduce drier time

5.     Modifying isolation to reduce point of maximum volume

6.     Eliminate a charcoaling

7.     Eliminate a solution drying

8.     Improved reactor cleaning protocols

9.     Add peripheral equipment to debottle-neck an operation

10.    Remove in-process checks where procedure is under control.