CHARLOTTE WILES¹, MARTIJN DE GRAAFF²
1. Chemtrix BV, Urmonderbaan 22, 6167 RD, Geleen, The Netherlands
2. TNO Sustainable Chemical Industry, Leeghwaterstraat
46, 2628 CA, Delft, The Netherlands

Abstract

Whilst continuous processing is a mainstream technique in the petrochemical and food industries as a tool for accessing highly productive and low cost production processes, until recently the pharmaceutical, fine chemical and specialty chemical industries were still dominated by batch processes and segmented unit operations. Through multi-disciplinary consortia activities in Europe this is changing, with users, technology providers and solution developers coming together in a pre-competitive arena with the common goal of accelerating the development and uptake of continuous process technologies. We discuss herein the challenges at hand, the lessons learned and the developments that remain to be addressed following two successful public-private partnership projects (Action Plan Process Intensification & Institute for Sustainable Process Technology) in the Netherlands and Belgium called CoRIAC and Flow4API.

INTRODUCTION

In the decade that followed the turn of the Century we saw a prolific uptake of continuous flow technology within academic and research environments, with focus on identi ... ...