Examples of scaled-up mixing calculations used in the industry

Scale-up efforts involve investigation into potential process hazards, understanding reaction kinetics and thermodynamics, identifying and characterizing impurities, mixing and mass transfer studies, heat transfer and heat removal studies as well as crystallization and polymorph control.
Some questions you should answer before we scale-up…
 What was going on in our lab reactor?
– Where have we been (Lab)?
– Where are we going (Plant)?
 How do we make the lab and plant reactor?
perform the same?
 What controls the rate of our process?
– Kinetics
– Rate of addition
– Temperature
– Mass transfer
– Gas/Liquid
– Solid/Liquid
– Liquid/Liquid
– Blending
– Heat Transfer

Examples of scaled-up mixing calculations used in the industry

Example #1:
Controlling Morphology and Particle Size in Continuous Energetic Material Processes
SAVED $900,000
The Process – Reactive and continuous crystallization process for energetic materials
The Problem – Maintaining particle size distribution and morphology during a continuous manufacturing process
The Task – Develop a continuous manufacturing process for producing energetic materials with a desired particle size distribution and morphology
Read more here: https://visimix.com/roi-no-3/

Example #2:
Mixing Calculations in Development
Saved $1,000,000
The Process – Batch and semi-batch process of typical fine chemical development
The Problem – Gap between R&D and production results
The Task – Reduce the number of required batches for the validation process in the production stage
Read more here: https://visimix.com/roi-no-0/

Example #3:
RSD Application in the Chemical Reaction Process
Saved at least $250,000 per year in just one mixing unit
The Process – Manufacturing of API material by sensitive reaction
The Problem – Unsatisfactory product quality. For batches of around 3,000 liters it is difficult to achieve a high-quality reaction because of low mixing intensity (turbulent shear rate).
The Task – Achieve the same paint quality in large batches as in small ones and improve the purity of the process at any scale.
Read more here: https://visimix.com/roi-no-2/

Example #4:
Troubleshooting of Crystallization Processes
Saved $2,000,000
The Process – Reactive crystallization acid base in the API industry, involving organic acid with an inorganic base (NaOH), both solids, in ethyl acetate solvent in the last step in order to obtain a final product before the solid treatment .
The reaction that generated the impurity was the hydrolysis of the solvent with the base. As a result of this impurity, the final product was out of specifications.
The Problem – Failures during scale-up. An additional problem arose when we shifted the processes to a second system (at the same scale), resulting in an approximately three-fold rise in impurity.
The Task – Eliminate the rise in impurity during scale-up
Read more here: https://visimix.com/roi-no-4/

Mixing Scale-up Calculations

In the summary of the following four examples, the main mixing calculations were performed on the connection between some process, e.g., crystallization, reaction, or polymorphism, with the mixing process. The commonality among all the examples is that all the interactions between the materials results in a good way; it is clear that we need to generate conditions specific to the process that we’re working on. This is because mixing is a very basic unit operation that provides the necessary environment to achieve the desired result. For that reason, we need to generate different conditions for every process.

This unit operation is so basic and so fundamental that it influences every kind of process that we can even imagine or think of in the chemical industry. Because we’re at this very specific and critical stage of transferring our process from lab to production, we’re investing more money and, hence, need to succeed the first time to market.
This study should be precise and good, and the only way to do it is by calculating the main important parameters that will influence the process. All of this information, all of this knowledge, you can acquire once you have the software in your hands, and you will have the appropriate customer support that explains not only the use of the software but also the basic phenomena of the mixing and how it can be connected with the process.