Chemical Product Engineering—The third paradigm

Abstract

New chemical products have historically been created by combining a broad knowledge of existing chemical products with scientific experimentation. Since a combinatorial explosion of product options will inevitably limit all experimental techniques, it should be preferable to minimize experimentation through a systematic consideration of product formulations prior to experimentation. This is the essence of product design and engineering. While the design of a chemical product and its manufacturing process are analogous, some critical differences are so fundamental that a new paradigm and new approaches are needed to successfully solve product design problems. In addition, chemical product design requires a methodology or algorithm to apply chemical engineering fundamentals. Product design techniques should draw largely on heuristics when data are limited, followed by more detailed calculations when data become available. Significant work is still needed to establish a comprehensive generic methodology for engineering chemical products in the absence of complete data.