Process Intensification in a nutshell.

What is Process Intensification(PI)?

    Any chemical engineering development that leads to a substantially smaller, cleaner, and more energy efficient technology is process intensification! 

The video embedded below explains the same lucidly.

The complete field of PI can be divided into process intensifying equipment and process intensifying methods.

These PI equipment have special designs which optimize and enhance the critical parameters pertaining to the equipment like the heat transfer area, HT coefficient in the case heat exchanging equipment and mass transfer area and MT coefficient in the case of Mass transfer operations. Whereas the PI methods usually  include the integration of multiple unit operations into a single unit operation. They also often include the use alternate energy sources.

Now let us get a deeper insight into the domain of  PI through some successful implementations of the above mentioned principles.

Some Examples:

Reactive distillation is one of the oldest and most widely implemented intensified operations. The unit combines a chemical reactor and a distillation column into a single unit. Over 150 reactive distillation units are operating at commercial scale in the petrochemical industry, most of which have been constructed in the last 30 years. Applications have included the production of MTBE, acetates (methyl, ethyl, and butyl), hydrolysis reactions, methylal synthesis, and many others. The intensification effort in the case of reactive distillation leads to a 20-80% reduction in capital costs and energy usage.

Another example would be a static mixer. The static mixer is a significant improvement over mechanical agitation due to its lower energy costs and uncomplicated design with no moving parts. Other important examples include monolithic reactors, compact/microchannel process units, divided wall column (DWC) distillation, ultrasonic and microwave units, and reverse flow reactors. These designs can lead to significant improvements in capital costs, energy usage, and process footprint.

PI has the potential of reducing energy usage, lowering equipment costs, and shrinking the required footprint of a given production facility.  However, it must be recognized that significant effort is required to implement the PI methodology and validate the use of new technologies.

So will the traditional chemical engineering unit operations be replaced by these intensive units?

Because the development of these new, integrated apparatuses and techniques is and will remain deeply rooted in the knowledge of the basic, traditional unit operations. More than that, further research progress in process intensification will demand a parallel progress in fundamental unit operation- based knowledge. Therefore, traditional unit operations will not disappear, at least not from chemical engineering research.