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= Process Intensification =

General information
In chemical engineering, process intensification (PI) is concerned with the improvement of chemical processes. The focus of improvement relies on at least one of the following aspects:
 * Costs (CAPEX and OPEX),
 * Process efficiency,
 * Waste,
 * Safety,
 * Quality,
 * Environment.

Process intensification in the early years of conception focused mainly on reducing the size of the equipment/plant (CAPEX and OPEX) and increasing the overall throughput. Over time new concepts have been employed. These new concepts take also into consideration the improvement of the process efficiency, operational costs, safety, waste and quality of the whole system. The implementation of PI processes relies on two alternatives, which is the use of intensified equipment or intensified methods. The intensification of equipment focuses on the improvement of equipment efficiency through increasing heat transfer, mass transfer and/or kinetics. The intensification of methods focuses on the integration of unit operations, alternative energy sources (microwave and ultrasound) and other methods. This classification of PI is not rigorous and an overlap between intensified equipment and methods can occur.

European Roadmap for PI
A European roadmap for process intensification has already been released. Within this roadmap several PI technologies have been described and assessed based on different criteria which evaluated the energy savings, CO2 reductions, cost competitiveness, maturity, quality and their required R&D investment in order to scale-up and implement these technologies. The number of identified PI technologies is 72 and the benefit assessment covers 4 different industry sectors:
 * Petrochemicals, bulk chemicals
 * Specialty chemicals, pharmaceuticals
 * Food ingredients
 * Consumer food

Obstacles for PI Implementation
PI has the potential to make the chemical industry more competitive, but there are still some obstacles, which need to be addressed in order to increase its penetration across the different industries. A list of some barriers is described below:


 * Lack of PI knowledge and scalability from lab scale experiments
 * Lack of testing facilities (large scale)
 * Risks associated to its implementation
 * Automation systems
 * Integration of PI systems with “old” plants