ISBN 9783843943390

978-3-8439-4339-0, Reihe Technische Chemie

Marius Harrmann
Contribution to the management of laboratory experiments in early phases of process development

179 Seiten, Dissertation Technische Universität Dortmund (2019), Softcover, A5

Zusammenfassung / Abstract

This contribution presents new methods for managing laboratory experiments in early phases of process development. The focus lies on handling and reducing uncertainties of process and design parameters for unit-operations. The lack of process and design data during these phases prevents an accurate cost estimation and decisions on alternative unit-operations. The new approaches make it possible to gain knowledge most efficiently. After setting up unit-operation models and their parameter's uncertainties, sensitivity analysis methods are applied to evaluate the influence of the parameters on the units' cost. A new key performance indicator, called potential of limiting the cost distribution (PLCD), enables evaluating the necessity of reducing the parameter's uncertainty for a single unit-operation. The reduction of the uncertainty with the biggest impact on the cost by performing a laboratory experiment will lead to a more accurate cost estimation. By using this procedure in an iterative way, substantial improvements in the cost estimation can be achieved from cycle to cycle most effectively. This way a straight forward approach is generated that manages laboratory experiments in early process development phases.

The first two approaches in chapter 3 and 4 are exemplary applied to a fluid-fluid-extraction column model separating water/acetone/toluene. The third approach in chapter 5 is applied on distillation and melt crystallization separating o-xylol and p-xylol.