Context and overall objectives of the project
The Intensified by Design project (or IbD for short) was funded under the SPIRE (Sustainable Process Industries through Resource and Energy Efficiency) Public Private Partnership within the European Commission’s H2020 Programme.
SPIRE brings together cement, ceramics, chemicals, engineering, minerals and ores, non-ferrous metals, steel and water. Together they represent a major part of the manufacturing base in EU-27 including more than 450,000 individual enterprises. They represent 20% of the total European manufacturing industry, with over 6.8 million employees and generating more than € 1,600 billion turnover. They all have a clear and urgent interest in improving resource efficiency, as their production processes are highly dependent on energy (European industry accounted for more than a quarter of total energy consumption in 2010 in Europe with a significant portion of that used within the process industry), utilities and raw materials.
The SPIRE Roadmap is committed to increasing the competitiveness of the European sector and transitioning it towards a model of sustainability. It is here where Process Intensification (PI) could contribute significantly to the competitiveness of the European process industries by making industrial processes faster, more efficient and better for the environment. In very simple terms PI is the ability to produce much more with less, thanks to new solutions based on high end technologies that result in more compact equipment, as well as faster, more efficient industrial processes that are better for the environment. PI substantially decreases the equipment- size/production-capacity ratio, and ultimately results in cheaper, sustainable technologies as a result of process and chain efficiency and reduced capital and operating costs.
Despite the impacts for cost competitiveness, energy savings, CO2 emissions reduction, process safety and reliability, the industrial implementation of PI is complicated and particularly in processes involving solids, whereby practical challenges in relation to blockages and fouling among others need to be overcome. In response to this need, our project has developed a holistic software platform that will provide engineers with the knowledge, methodology and tools for the design of Process Intensification devices and processes based on a revolutionary ‘intensified-by-design approach’. Six PI industry case studies have been implemented in mining, ceramics, pharmaceuticals and chemical processes in order to validate our tools and approach, as well as to, in their own right, scale up PI modules and their control and fouling remediation strategies towards industrialised intensified processes. Over the course of 3 years, our IbD project has brought about a step change contribution to this very important and emerging field of process intensification.
