How a structured approach to scale-up strategy drives development, partnership and production decisions

Abstract: The full impact of a new technology can only be achieved if it is available for large scale implementation and commercial success. Specifically, in the field of Green Chemistry the market entry of new molecules or new processes often require several steps in scale to allow for internal risk mitigation answering the questions of scalability of a process step, the process safety and a better understanding of the costs. As important and often not so well considered is the risk mitigation in the downstream value chain all they way to the final product and its end of life use evaluations. This talk will outline a value chain driven approach to answering technical and economic scale-up risk as well as show possible solution pathways in a cost-efficient way suitable even for small companies. Employing a comparative and simple approach the technical feasibility as well as costs on different pilot and production scales can be assessed and compared. The talk will include three examples, including two of new and sustainable molecules derived from biomass, in which processes and products were scaled from mL laboratory scale trough pilot production to multi ton commercial production. Decision points for different approaches, investment decisions and partnerships will be evaluated and thus the relevance to the value chain driven scale-up approach highlighted.