PEC12-25 CAPEC-PROCESS Industrial Consortium ... - DTU Orbit

6. Future Developments & Opportunities
For the industrial consortium, CAPEC and PROCESS are working on developing and
analyzing new products and their corresponding processes together with achieving further
process-product improvements through application of green chemistry principles and
sustainability measures. Several joint-projects have been initiated to achieve this. First,
however, a brief overview on PSE/CAPE and its relation to the CAPEC-PROCESS
industrial consortium is given, followed by the current and future research plans within the
identified focus areas.
6.1 Relation to PSE/CAPE
Process systems engineering promotes the solution of a problem in a systematic manner. In
this way, although it has traditionally been applied by the chemical engineering community
to solve problems for the oil and petrochemical industries, its potential application range is
much wider. This is because the word “process” also implies, among others, the process of
solving a problem; design of a biochemical / biological process for conversion of
biomaterial to specific chemicals; and, the process of finding/designing chemicals with
desired properties.
Most of the earlier developments can be linked to chemical processes involved with the
manufacture of high volume bulk chemicals and the related industries (such as the oil and
gas, petrochemical and chemical industries). To a lesser extent, these methods and tools
have also been applied to the manufacture of low volume specialty chemicals. Since its
formation, CAPEC has contributed by providing systematic, reliable and efficient models,
methods and tools that have now become standard for the chemical process industries as
well as in chemical engineering education. CAPEC software, employing CAPEC models
and methods, such as ProPred (property prediction software), ProCAMD (molecular
design-solvent selection software), SustainPro (sustainable process design software),
ProCAFD (process flowsheet design/synthesis), ICAS (Integrated Computer Aided
System), are routinely used by the CAPEC consortium members and more than 50
universities outside of Denmark.
The question therefore arises, what next? Where are the new challenges for CAPEC and
what could be the new directions for research and education? Through collaboration with
the CAPEC industrial member companies and academic partners, CAPEC conducted a
“gap-analysis” with respect to identifying the current trends and the future needs with
respect to chemical products, the processes that manufacture them and the models, methods
and tools needed to design, analyze and operate them. The conclusions are briefly
summarized below.
“To satisfy the needs of the modern society, it is necessary to continuously develop better
and significantly improved chemicals based products. The bulk chemicals as well as the
specialty chemicals have important roles. For example, the bulk chemicals act as raw
materials, solvents, process fluids, etc., are needed in the manufacture of specialty
chemicals that may become an active ingredient for a pharmaceutical and/or drug product.
Therefore improved designs of continuous processes (needed for the manufacture of bulk
chemicals) are as important as designs of batch operations (needed for the manufacture of
specialty chemicals). Also, alternative production routes from renewable feed materials
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