(90b) “Process Always Comes First” When Successfully Applying Mixing Technology (Invited Talk)

Understanding how mixing affects a process is critical to bridge the gap between the lab and the plant. We must avoid surprises on scale-up to achieve commercial success.

I have been very fortunate in my career to have the opportunity to work on many challenging chemical and physical processes. Many of those required us to balance multiple competing rate processes and sometimes conflicting process responses. Almost always, some of the multiple competing rate processes and process responses would be affected by mixing. Since various mixing parameters scale up differently, understanding which mixing parameters controlled the various process responses and how those would scale up was usually critical to the commercial success of the project.

In this Special Lecture, I will give a personal reflection on my 40 years in industrial mixing and process development. I will share some examples from my career where mixing was critical to commercial success, give my perspective on the critical connection between process and applied mixing technology, relate my experience with networking as an effective way of managing (and disseminating) technology within a company, and talk about ways to efficiently characterize how mixing affects chemical and physical processes (the Bourne Protocol and more).

Our understanding of mixing technology has grown greatly over the last 40 years. In the examples, I will highlight how we approached certain problems over the years and why some of these “old” approaches should not be forgotten despite recent technological advances. I will close by giving my thoughts on current trends in process development and mixing, along with my opinions on future needs for the mixing and process development communities.