Fundamentals towards a Modular Microstructured Production Plant

For years, microtechnology is being considered as an emerging technique for chemical engineering tasks to overcome safety issues corresponding to high volumes and gaining higher selectivities and yields in reaction technology. Whereas in reaction technology a broad variety of microstructured equipment is available, in product purification/separation adequate equipment is missing. Research is focused on modular fast and flexible smaller production plants being operated continuously instead of batchwise in order to reduce engineering efforts and time‐to‐process. To cope with these demands, an appropriate definition of modules, which could be easily chosen and combined, is inevitable. In addition, these modules have to be well characterized concerning fluid dynamics and separation performance. This paper focuses on the characterization of available modules/devices. A standard method and analysis of the results concerning manufacturing accuracy and operation range is proposed. Miniplant technology is described as an efficient tool to validate process concepts proposed by process simulation studies. Necessary model parameters are determined for industrial complex mixtures in miniaturized laboratory equipment. Parameters are calculated model based to gain maximal accuracy. State of the art of miniplant technology is described and basic characteristic data are presented.