The concept

Chemical intermediates produced in high volumes (hundreds of thousands to several million tonnes per year) are traditionally manufactured in large, dedicated, continuous world-scale plants. These high volume, highly optimised plants benefit from economy of scale, e.g. capital expenditure per unit of product, efficient use of raw materials and energy integration. However, they require large upfront investment and significant development time / effort to build. They also lack flexibility in terms of quick adaptation to changing market conditions and introduction of new / more efficient technologies.

The new F³ Factory concept for decentralised, modular, continuous, medium scale plants is focused on the development of smaller and more flexible production units located closer to raw material suppliers or downstream users.

The state-of-the-art process for acrylic acid and their derivatives production starts with fossil-based propylene. The Arkema industrial case study is seeking to develop a new greener and more cost effective production process that starts from bio-sourced glycerol - a widely available green by-product of oleochemistry and biodiesel production.

F³ Factory methodology for medium scale plants

To compete with state-of-the-art world-scale processes, the new F³ Factory process needs a refined optimisation to discover the most economic alternatives.  PDC (Process Design Center) has developed a methodology for the design of optimised, complex, medium scale plants by adapting conceptual process designs to fit with the new F³ Factory concept.  This systematic approach is an iterative ‘whole process design’ which comprises:

1. black-box modelling to establish an initial idea of the process steps;
2. selection of possible function or tasks;
3. selection of unit operations capable of providing the required performances;  within the F³ Factory approach, unit operations that are more compact or easy to number up, are preferred;
4. integration in a detailed flow-sheet and mass balance.

From production challenges to innovative solutions

 Replacing fossil fuel feedstocks with bio-sourced feedstocks leads to several challenges: 

• The new impurity profile needs to be managed.
• Varying quality of the raw material.
• In some cases, faster de-activation of catalyst can occur and must be addressed, while maintaining high production yields.
• Energy issues: a bio-based process is competitive from an economical and environmental point of view only if the process is not too energy intensive.

Within WP3, whole process design evaluation focusing on the systematic examination of alternatives allowed us to select processes with low emission and high energy integration. Thanks to parallel lab and process work, we found the global optimum of the process, taking into account specific conditions for reaction and purification requirements.

Within WP5, we developed innovative solutions to handle faster de-activating catalysts with a very low number of reactors. Process intensification was also implemented by combining reaction and distillation in a single equipment for acrylate ester production. 

Within WP6 we focused on optimised purification sequences that combine a set of distillation and crystallisation steps.  As part of this activity, we patented a process with a reduced number of distillation columns.

Breaking azeotrope with membrane was also introduced to reduce the number of equipment and energy consumption.

Validation of F³ Factory solutions

In conducting the validation studies for this case study (WP7), Arkema discovered and patented a process for the selective chemical elimination of an impurity which could simplify the purification scheme.

Two pilot plants for validation of the F³ Factory concepts, at a scale of several kg/h, are now in operation at Arkema and TU Dortmund.

Project contact information:
Jean-François Devaux, Arkema

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