Capitalizing on Pilot Scale for a Mature Process Technology Scale-up

SABIC has been a leading solutions provider of differentiated and novel offerings in the world of amorphous polymers for more than two decades. As new LNP™ copolymers are designed or invented, each comes with its own unique set of challenges in scale-up translation to manufacturing. Complexity in a new resin process design creates additional challenges. Each challenge, however, presents an opportunity to examine fundamentals-based fit between a new copolymer and a unit operation. SABIC’s state-of-the-art pilot facility has enabled in-depth studies of relationship among process, product, and quality CTQ’s. The end result is a very mature scale-up package that saves production line time and minimizes losses.

This presentation will focus on one such challenging scale-up that was defined by a mismatch of the copolymer resin process between the plant sections of reaction and isolation. The polymerization reaction required unique pH conditions for a part of the reaction. This limited the polymerization step by restricting the addition rate of other raw materials. The isolation section must take the output of the reaction section and requires fast monomer incorporation under unique pH conditions to move forward in stable operation. Pilot scale explorations deliberately investigated the key reaction parameters at the extreme conditions. Resulting materials underwent comprehensive product performance testing and various analytical characterizations. The outcomes were applied to devise optimal reaction operation regime and a detailed manufacturing scale-up package. When the very first scale-up production runs were conducted, the plant achieved safe and stable operation for the entire duration and produced impressively high yields of the finished product.