1.1 Purpose of the Book

This book provides industrial process scale-up guidelines and methods. These methods are about information generation, risk assessment and risk mitigation to such a low level that commercial implementation is successful and the innovation pathway is rapid and efficient. Success means that the process provides the product as promised by the design targets and is within the safety, health, environmental, social and economic constraints.

The nature of this book is prescriptive and not descriptive. It provides the reader guidelines and methods on how to scale-up industrial processes from idea to successful commercial implementation. These guidelines and methods can be used to generate essential information, to assess risks and to mitigate risks to such a low level that commercial implementation is successful and the innovation pathway is rapid and efficient. This book also provides real industrial innovation cases with additional learning points.

The effects of a commercial scale implementation failure will be enormous. It is not only the loss of the capital investment which easily can mount to 100–1000 M€ and the loss of future revenue but more importantly the loss of trust of clients that the company can deliver their products as promised. It also means the loss of trust of top management in the innovation power of the company is deteriorated and budget for future process innovation projects will be hard to obtain. If the commercial scale implementation is not a total failure but an unplanned delay in start-up or a reduced production capacity relative to the design capacity, the effects will still be significant.

Merrow (2011) Lager (2012) showed that these total and partly failures still happen often in the process industries. Many commercial scale process start-ups in oil and gas, chemicals and metal ore industries have a long delayed start-up and several have not reached design capacity even 5 years after the start of the start-up.

The underlying reasons for these large scale failures are due to an unsound technical base and lack of organisational preparation (Merrow, 2011 Lager, 2012). The unsound technical base can easily happen due to the following characteristics of processes:

Directly building a novel commercial scale process without research and development is therefore doomed to fail.

Lack of organisational start-up preparation sometimes happens when the company underestimates the difficulty of starting up a new process or thinks that it is the start-up of a conventional commercial scale process, while in reality the process is novel.

By following the plausible methods and guidelines on scale-up written down in this book, I believe however that these failures can be prevented. This belief is founded in the plausibility of the guidelines, the successful industrial cases described in Chapter 9 and the successful well-prepared cases described by Merrow (2011).

The book is intended for industrial process researchers and developers, who will find many guidelines for each stage from ideation to commercial scale implementation. Furthermore it will be of use for contract researchers and technology providers to see the structure of the process industries and their interactions with them.

It will also be of use for academic education. For undergraduate courses Chapter 2 deals about the structure of the process industry will be of interest, as well as the basic steps in executing a process concept design is discussed in Chapter 3. For teachers and graduate students the whole book will be of interest.

The book does not contain descriptions on how to manage and organise industrial research, development, design and process engineering. It also does not contain detailed process design guidelines for the commercial scale design. For that the reader is suggested to refer other books on industrial management and process engineering such as Dal Pont (2011) Lager (2010).

1.2 Scale-Up Definition

The scale-up definition used in this book:

Process scale-up is generating knowledge to transfer ideas into successful implementations.

Knowledge generation involves literature reading, consultation, experiments, design and modelling. The purpose of this knowledge generation is to be able to assess risks and to reduce risks to acceptable levels for the successful commercial scale implementation. Successful implementation means that the commercial scale process meets the design targets within the planned start-up time.

The purpose of industrial process scale-up is risk reduction needed for success.

For people working in the process industries this is a nearly trivial statement and Merrow’s book on industrial megaprojects, based on more than 1000 industrial cases, proves that indeed direct commercial implementation without proper industrial research and development the risks of failure is always too high to take.

For most academics however this statement is not trivial at all, because in the academic world the purpose of research is to generate understanding, knowledge and theory. The word risk does not enter in research papers about process innovation and is also not found in process innovation books. Jain et al. (2010) do not contain any description of a goal for innovation. Vogel (2005) and Betz (2011) only state that the goal of industrial research and development is to achieve competitive advantages.

1.3 Scale-Up Methodology

The scale-up methodology of this book is based on knowledge generation for risk identification, risk assessment and risk reduction. Risk identification of a new process concept is already very difficult, because not all relevant information will be available. If a certain piece of information is not available, then it may be identified as an unknown. But for certain risks even that information may be lacking; I even don’t know what I don’t know. Table 1.1 shows these two different types of knowledge gaps, their associated risks and information plans to close the knowledge gaps.

Risk identification is therefore carried out several times during the innovation project. Each time more information has been generated more risks items will be identified and consequently risk assessment will improve. If the risks are too high risk reduction plans will be made and be executed in the next innovation stage. The risk dimensions envisaged are safety, and health, environmental, social, economic and technical.

The methodology focuses furthermore on guidelines and methods that are cost effective and efficient.

The effectiveness is obtained by providing guidelines on project target and constraints.

The efficiency is obtained by the stage-gate approach (Verloop, 2004). In the ideation stage, for instance, only the most critical information on success or failure is generated with a very limited effort. In the research stage only information is generated for a feasible process concept design and its assessment. In the development stage integrated mini-plants and/or pilot plant tests are described and guidelines provided when and when not these integrated plants are necessary.

In each subsequent stage more information is generated, risks are more clearly identified and more robustly mitigated to acceptable levels. If at any stage-gate the risks are estimated to be too high, or the cost of further development is higher than the final benefits of commercial operation, then the project is stopped, so that only a small amount of money is lost. In this way innovation is not only effectively but also efficiently executed. This stage-gate approach facilitates furthermore communication about the status of the innovation to internal and external stakeholders and to external innovation partners.

1.4 Content Structure of the Book

The content structure of the book is as follows. Information about the process industry is found in Chapter 2. It explains its branches, players, connections and technology types and levels. This chapter will help to be aware for which branch the new process is to be implemented, what the connections with other stakeholders are and what potential partners for the process innovation are.

Chapter 3 provides methods and guidelines for the ideation and research stages. Particular attention is paid to the role of process concept design to plan experimental research and to methods for identifying knowledge gaps and performing risk assessments.

Chapter 4 provides methods and guidelines for the development stage. It particularly focuses on when to have integrated mini-plants or pilot plants to be able to assess the technical risks of failure.

Chapter 5 provides guidelines when and when not to have a small commercial scale demonstration process to reduce business and technical risks to acceptable levels.

Start-up guidelines for the commercial scale are found in Chapter 6.

Chapter 7 provides detailed scale-up methods for most unit operations, which are critical to the whole commercial scale process performance.

Chapter 8 shows in detail the present scientific literature of process scale-up and its limitations. Then it shows a risk-based scale-up method developed by Det Norske Veritas (DNV) and shows how it applied to the very large industrial scale-up case of carbon dioxide absorption with amides. This DNV contribution supports the overall scale-up risk reduction rationale of the book.

Chapter 9 shows several successful and failed industrial scale-up cases and their specific learning points.