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Sonication and Microwave Processing of Material Feedstock 

Project description

Electrification processes for speciality chemicals industries

The EU-funded SIMPLIFY project will enable the electrification of the chemical process industry, particularly the speciality chemicals industries. SIMPLIFY considers that in intensified processes, where alternative energy sources allow flexible continuous technologies to achieve localised ultrasound and microwave actuation of multiphase, flow reactors powered by electricity from renewable sources can achieve high-value product synthesis. The project will work on three major classes of speciality processes: chemical processes involving highly viscous streams, chemical processes involving suspensions requiring long residence times, and chemical processes involving suspensions with inherently high reaction rates. SIMPLIFY will boost the transition from chemical reactions with poor resource efficiency to high resource efficiency processes.

Objective

SIMPLIFY, the Sonication and Microwave Processing of material Feedstock project, aims at enabling the electrification of the chemical process industry – and in particular the specialty chemicals industries. SIMPLIFY's vision is that of intensified processes, where alternative energy sources enable flexible continuous technologies to achieve localized ultrasound and microwave actuation of multiphase, flow reactors powered by electricity from renewable sources for the purpose of high-value product synthesis.

SIMPLIFY has selected three major classes of specialty processes to work on:
i. The class of chemical processes involving highly viscous streams, with MW/US-assisted reactive extrusion of polyurethane as representative;
ii. The class of chemical processes involving suspensions, in particular those requiring long residence times (up to hours), with US/MW-assisted reactive crystallization of zeolite microparticles in a continuous oscillatory baffle reactor (COBR);
iii. The class of chemical processes involving suspensions, in particular those with inherently high reaction rates (residence times of seconds to minutes), with MW/US-assisted reactive crystallization of titania nanoparticle synthesis in a plug flow reactor (PFR).

SIMPLIFY advances the technology readiness level (TRL) of flow technology for these multiphase streams involving suspensions or viscous products from TRL4 (technology validation in lab) to TRL6 (industrial demonstration), thus pushing the transition from chemical reactions with poor resource – both material and energy – efficiency and variable product quality to processes with high resource efficiency and excellent, uniform product properties.

Fields of science (EuroSciVoc)

CORDIS classifies projects with EuroSciVoc, a multilingual taxonomy of fields of science, through a semi-automatic process based on NLP techniques. See: https://op.europa.eu/en/web/eu-vocabularies/euroscivoc.

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Coordinator

KATHOLIEKE UNIVERSITEIT LEUVEN
Net EU contribution
€ 1 099 024,75
Address
OUDE MARKT 13
3000 Leuven
Belgium

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Region
Vlaams Gewest Prov. Vlaams-Brabant Arr. Leuven
Activity type
Higher or Secondary Education Establishments
Links
Total cost
€ 1 099 024,75

Participants (14)