(187b) Entrepreneurial Chemical Mega Projects with Parallel Path Process Development

The start-up world has unleashed the excitement of the American entrepreneurial spirit.  The United States leads the world in innovation.  The lessons learned that have revolutionized innovation in the  manipulation of information can be applied to innovation in chemical mega projects.  Manipulating mass, however, is much different than manipulating information.  The rules of entrepreneurial efforts have to be applied in a more complex way to insure safety and risk are mitigated within the adventure of changing the world in the chemical industry.

A mega project is a high value, complex, interdependent, multi-organizational undertaking that creates a game changing difference in the landscape of chemical processing.  The bonds that are formed, the lessons that are learned and the impact that is felt spans careers, industries and businesses.  There is nothing more exciting.

Game changing mega projects are usually based upon some new process development that enables the cost optimization, capacity increase, or yield improvement on some needed chemical product.  Feedstock changes, energy efficiency or production routes are usually the chemical engineering technology behind a mega project. 

In the old model, process development would be completed, the process work up would be transferred to the process engineering group and the project would move in the serial steps to execution.  In today’s fast paced market, parallel paths must be considered to accelerate the pace.  However, unlike the technology world, the first application out the door, version 1.0, has to be safe and has to work due to the great differences in safety and financial risk between a project that manipulates mass, and a project that manipulates information.