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Report

Teaser, summary, work performed and final results

Periodic Reporting for period 1 - IbD (Intensified by DesignÂ® for the intensification of processes involving solids handling)

Teaser

Summary

Context of the project:

SPIRE brings together cement, ceramics, chemicals, engineering, minerals and ores, non-ferrous metals, steel and water. Together they represent a major part of the manufacturing base in EU-27 including more than 450,000 individual enterprises. They represent 20% of the total European manufacturing industry, with over 6.8 million employees and generating more than â‚¬ 1,600 billion turnover. They all have a clear and urgent interest in improved resource efficiency due to the high dependence in their production on energy (European industry accounted for more than a quarter of total energy consumption in 2010 in Europe with a significant portion of that used within the process industry), utilities and raw materials.
It is here where Process Intensification could contribute significantly to the competitiveness of the European process industries by making industrial processes faster, more efficient and better for the environment. PI substantially decreases the equipment- size/production-capacity ratio, and ultimately results in cheaper, sustainable technologies as a result of process and chain efficiency and reduced capital and operating costs.

Overall objectives of the project:

The Intensified-by-Design (IbDÂ®) Project will create a holistic platform for facilitating process intensification design and optimisation in processes in which solids are an intrinsic part. The IbDÂ® Platform is essentially a comprehensive devices-and-processes design-platform for the industrial realisation of PI involving solids handling. IbD overall objectives are:
- To establish the case study business drivers, constrains and requirements and to draw up the specifications of the IbD platform
- To adapt the most suitable chemical process design methodologies to be embedded in the IbD Platform
- To develop the computational tools that will be integrated in the IbD Platform
- To develop a PI module designer template for creating new PI designs and to prepare Built PI modules for incorporation into the IbD Platform
- To establish control strategies for effectively controlling intensified processes
- To develop the IbD Platform architecture, backend and Graphical User Interface for enabling the fast and optimal design and implementation of PI
- To implement industrial process intensification case studies using the IbD Platform
- To validate and demonstrate the case studies and to confirm the effectiveness of the IbD platform as a comprehensive devices-and-processes design-platform for facilitating PI
- To develop a business model for monetising the IbD Platform
- To maximise the innovation impacts of the project through effective communication, dissemination and contribution to standards

Work performed

The work performed focused on the following activities:

- Definition of the Case study analysis by defining the most suitable process intensification route(s) as well as the monitoring systems and fouling remediation strategies by addressing the main points per Case Study.
- New Process design methodologies have been developed. (i) It has been identified that most of the inventions related with PI face secondary problems implying the presence of unsolved contradictions and developed the concepts for a TRIZ Methodology for Process Intensification to resolve these contradictions. (ii) It has been developed a knowledge-based engineering (KBE) approach to evaluating and rank existing PI solutions for implementation into chemical processes where solids are an intrinsic part of the process
- Computational approaches and tools have been developed to optimise and simulate PI processes and assess their impact. (i) It has been developed Discrete Particle Model (DPM) simulations. (ii) It has been developed Direct Numerical Simulation of turbulent flows with particles. (iii) It has been generated new user defined functions in Fluent to combine DEM with CFD, and applied existing CFD capability to 5 of the 6 test cases. It has been mapped the performance of a wide range of equipment configurations and processing conditions and derive from this a Radial base function. (vi) It has worked to develop a high level LCA and costing tool that enables ranking off the PI options according to cost and environmental impact criteria
- A survey of the literature describing state-of-the-art PI technologies was completed. A number of PI technologies exhibiting promising potential for the case studies have been identified for processes. The process control point-of-view on modelling, measurements, and control aspects of continuous solids handling processes has been treated
- For the alpha and beta versions of the IbD platform, the behaviour of the UI has been clearly defined, and the main focus has been addressed to the KBE and Flowsheet layouts, as well as the general UI of the platform. Both versions have been released
- Six industrial case studies have been identified, and based upon the use of the Platform, including in particular the KBE database and selection procedure, intensified technologies capable of handling solids have been selected for all of them
- A clear and ambitious Communication and Dissemination Plan was written. Based on that plan, communication and dissemination activities have been performed and be reported in the Interim Communication Report. The IbD website was launched. Promotional material have been designed

Final results

Progress beyond the state of the art:

The IBDÂ® project is highly ambitious. It has enormous potential to be a worldwide reference as a European designed enabling platform for the successful industrial implementation of PI technologies. Process Intensification is not a new concept. PI has been achieved through the use of large forces, such as increased pressure, smaller geometry, microfluidic interactions, structured surfaces, and different types of energy. However, methods for the handling of solids in continuous intensified processes are lacking. As identified by SPIRE-08, this hampers the industrial realization of processes involving solids handling. The IbD project proposed to make a landmark advance in bridging the technological and knowledge gaps in the area of the industrial implementation of PI in processes involving solids.

In this context, the project will develop and validating worldâ€™s first holistic devices-and-processes design-platform for enabling the intensification of processes involving solids. During the project the Platform will be used it to implement 5 PI case studies in popular processes within the mining, ceramics, pharmaceutical, non-ferrous metals and chemical processing industries, IBD will make a very positive contribution to the expected impacts of SPIRE-08-2015: Solids handling for intensified process technology:
- Novel, efficient and cost effective production concepts realized in commercially available process intensified equipment, respectively process equipment modules
- Innovative modules allowing to process solids in medium to small scale production units (particular emphasis should be given to the SPIRE sectors)
- Amelioration of chemical applications accessible via process intensified reaction systems through whole process design with focus on solids (downstream) processing operations
- Shorter times to process/market and higher production capacity
- Cross-sectorial technology transfer