Process Technology: An Introduction - Haan A.B. 2015

Preface

Multi-disciplinary cooperation is one of the main contributors to successful innovation and project execution within the current and future process industry. The key challenge within multi-disciplinary teams is communication, which will be much more effective with a basic understanding of each other’s discipline. It is exactly this reason, enhancing the understanding of process technology by those without a background in (bio)chemical process engineering, that has motivated me to write this textbook as basis for the industrial course “Introduction to the World of Process Technology”. I developed this course as professor at the University of Twente and had the pleasure of lecturing it for many years at several multi-national companies. The always highly motivated participants consisted of chemists (organic/catalytic/ bio/physical/analytical), material technologists, economists, accountants, lawyers and many others working in a position where cooperation and communication with (bio)chemical process engineers was an essential part of their job.

The main objective of this textbook is to provide a general overview about chemical and biochemical process and product technology. It focuses on the structure and development of production processes, main technological operations, and the most important aspects of product and process development including economics. For technological operations the emphasis is on their operating principles, reasons for application, and available industrial equipment. Design calculations and mathematics has been kept to the absolute minimum required to understand why process technologists and engineers need certain information. All topics are extensively illustrated with representative examples.

The textbook is organized into seven distinct parts. As an introduction the structure of the chemical industry and (bio)chemical processes is treated in Chapters 1-2. Chapters 3-5 deal with (bio)chemical reaction engineering and reactor technology. The most frequently applied molecular separations distillation, extraction, absorption, stripping, adsorption and ion-exchange are discussed in Chapters 6-9. The part on mechanical separation technology presents in Chapters 10-12 an overview of the most important techniques for separating heterogeneous mixtures. Technologies relevant for particle and final product manufacturing are treated in Chapters 13-15. Hereafter Chapters 16-18 deal with the development, scale-up, design, engineering, and safety of processes. The book concludes with 3 appendices, in which major industrial processes for the production of base chemicals, polymers, and fine chemicals are described. It should be noted by the reader that the appendices only represent a small fraction of the numerous industrial processes in operation and that the described processes have been selected with a bias for the companies where the course was lectured. For further reading an extensive list of reference books is provided.

In the preparation of this book, many colleagues and lecture participants provided valuable contributions, comments, and suggestions. Among these I am particularly indebted to Floris Buijzen, Tanja Dekic Zivkovic, Kees van de Voort-Maarschalk, and Paul Willems. A special word of thanks is due to Laurent van Dierendonckt^† Bart Drinkenburg^†, and Ton Simons for their initial support in paving the way for the industrial course and thereby this textbook.

Delft, April 2015