Process Intensification and Catalysis

Abstract

Process intensification (PI) is the new approach to chemical process designs that is revolutionizing the chemical industry. Even though PI still struggles to find a definition, it targets order of magnitude improvements while bringing indisputable benefits including reduced size of the equipment and energy savings, and decreases reagents inventory, which makes processes safer. PI distinguished itself for the innovative approaches to chemical process designs, which take advantage of structured and repeated reaction units that minimize heat, mass and momentum transfer, whereby the economy of scale is attained by numbering-up rather than scaling-up. It also exploits intense centrifugal fields several hundreds of times greater than the gravity, and alternative energy sources such as ultrasound and microwaves, which interact with the substances at the molecular level. PI is in particular relevant in multiphase systems such as heterogeneously catalyzed processes where transport phenomena are often the rate-limiting step in the process.