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Solids handling for intensified process technology

 

Specific challenge:Decentralised on-site plants and modular approaches towards small- and medium-scale production will play a significant role in tomorrow’s process industry. However, the use of highly intensified, miniaturized equipment is largely restricted to gas/liquid and liquid/liquid systems, while most processes applied in the chemical and pharmaceutical industry, as well as industries processing steel, glass, cement, non-ferrous metals, or minerals, involve solids as reactants, catalysts, intermediates or (by-)products. If these processes are to be transferred to intensified process equipment, it is likely that difficulties associated with the presence of particulate solids will be encountered, such as fouling or blockages. Robust and sustainable solutions to these problems are hardly available. This hampers the industrial realization of processes involving solids handling.

A further challenge of increasing importance for these industries comes from the increasingly demanding custom