Disconnect between chemistry and engineering?

[drqw]

Do people have any views on whether there isn't enough consideration given to engineering during the earlier stages of chemical process development?

For example, the focus during preliminary lab testing and lab optimization is usually on the chemistry-chemists scale up in an iterative fashion and deal with problems at each scale as and when they arise. This breeds a certain commitment to a particular basic chemical process (lab time and raw materials costs), with little flexibility to try anything other than perhaps closely related alternatives.

I suppose what I'm asking is, if to some extent process behaviour on larger scales can be simulated, why isn't it considered early on, rather than the 'bootstrapping' approach taken now that often leads to abortive process development campaigns or more pilot trials than are perhaps necessary?

 

[moltenmetal]

Paul Szabo from Xerox wrote a good paper on this topic for the AIChE Process Development Symposium in Chicago this past summer. He advocates a closer relationship between chemistry and engineering- putting chemical engineers into the process development laboratory to do experiments at a far earlier stage than the pilot plant.

 

[drqw]

Thanks moltenmetal.