The New Process Engineering Blog is Coming Soon
Developing a new chemical process or taking a new technology from an initial idea to commercial operation is rarely straightforward.
There are technical questions to answer, risks to understand, experiments to design, equipment decisions to make and, ultimately, an important commercial question to address: can this process work successfully at scale?
That is exactly the territory we work in at New Process Engineering, and it is what our new blog will explore.
Practical insight into developing new processes
New Process Engineering specialises in the development of new and novel processes and products, supporting projects from the earliest stages of an idea through laboratory development, pilot plant operation and ultimately the design, construction and optimisation of commercial-scale plants.
Our new blog will give us an opportunity to explore some of the challenges, decisions and engineering principles involved at each stage of that journey.
Rather than simply discussing process engineering in theory, we will focus on the practical issues that can determine whether an emerging technology makes the successful transition from concept to commercial reality.
What will we be writing about?
Future articles will explore subjects from across the process development lifecycle, including technology scale-up, concept development, laboratory testing, pilot plants, engineering design and commercial plant operation.
We will look at topics such as:
- Assessing whether a new technology is realistically scalable
- Identifying technical and commercial barriers before committing significant resources
- Developing effective technology development roadmaps
- Using concept studies to turn an idea into an initial engineering design
- Designing experiments that answer the right development questions
- Understanding what laboratory results can and cannot tell you about full-scale operation
- Designing and operating pilot plants
- Collecting useful process data during pilot operation
- Moving from pilot-scale success to commercial-scale engineering
- Understanding the role of FEED and detailed engineering
- Commissioning and starting up new processes
- Troubleshooting, debottlenecking and improving existing plant performance
- Managing risk, uncertainty, economics, operability and process safety throughout technology development
We will also explore some of the less obvious challenges associated with developing genuinely new technology.
Why new process development requires a different approach
Conventional engineering projects often begin with a relatively well-understood process and a clear set of design requirements.
Developing something new is different.
At the beginning of a technology development project, there may be many possible technical routes and relatively little information about which will ultimately prove viable.
Every experiment, assessment and engineering decision therefore needs to help reduce uncertainty and move the project towards the most promising solution.
The challenge is not simply to create a process that works.
It is to create one that can work safely, reliably and economically at the scale required.
That means considering factors such as process economics, scalability, regulation, environmental requirements, reliability, operability, development timescales and available resources alongside the underlying science and engineering.
We will be exploring all of these subjects in future articles.
From an idea to an operating plant
One of the main themes of the blog will be the progression from initial process concept to commercial operation.
That can involve technology scale-up assessments, concept studies, laboratory experimentation, pilot plant development, Front End Engineering Design (FEED), detailed engineering, commissioning and optimisation.
Each stage generates information that informs the next.
Handled well, this creates a structured development programme in which uncertainty and technical risk are progressively reduced before increasingly significant investment decisions are made.
Handled badly, projects can spend substantial amounts of time and money developing technology without resolving the fundamental issues that will ultimately determine whether it can be commercialised.
Our aim will be to share some of the engineering thinking that helps distinguish one from the other.
Coming soon
We will be publishing our first articles here soon, with practical insights into new process development, technology scale-up and process engineering.
Whether you are investigating an early-stage process idea, developing technology in the laboratory, considering a pilot plant or preparing to move an established process towards commercial-scale operation, we hope the New Process Engineering blog will become a useful resource.
If you are currently developing a new chemical process or product and would like to discuss the technical challenges involved, please get in touch with New Process Engineering.