(13c) Safety, ASAP and ALARP in Fast Track Process Development

In industry, new process developments are typically wanted by business sponsors As Soon As Possible (ASAP) or not at all, often with a desire to move directly from laboratory bench or pilot scale to full-scale commercial units.    Expectations from society and management drive a culture of zero tolerance for incidents impacting human safety or the environment, where risk must be mitigated to As Low As Reasonably Practicable (ALARP).     Research starts from a point of high uncertainty in process and chemistry, and often requires testing of multiple unit designs, configurations, and chemistries before arriving at an economic and optimal solution.   Each change represents a new risk to be managed.        

 How does one resolve the apparent conflict between speed, process and product assurance and safety?    Optimal use of scale-down methods, multi-use bench and pilot equipment combined with process modeling, and a drive to understand underlying mechanisms and fundamentals, is one collective approach to managing these competing interests.   Given complexity, time, and cost of managing change in large pilots, the ability to physically or virtually connect miniature prototypes of the proposed process configurations, and to simulate their performance including key integrated recycles, is absolutely key for fast track process development.   Using the principles of ALARP, rapid testing of prototypes and chemistries is best conducted on the smallest scale possible, before designing the first pilot as a demonstration of concept, and not as a configuration test unit.   Approaches to achieve this end including optimal use of multi-throughput or enhanced experimentation, will be the subject of this presentation.