a b s t r a c tAn integrative approach, involving marketing and management issues on the business side, and product design and prototyping on the technical side, is proposed for the development of chemical-based products. For the former, objective-time chart, RAT 2 IO modules and workflow diagrams are used for project management. For the latter, the integration of experiments, modeling and synthesis expedites product conceptualization and prototyping. Tasks for which chemical engineers are expected to play a key or a supporting role are discussed. An industrial application -the development of a skin-care cream is described alongside the procedure in order to illustrate the myriad issues in product development. In addition to the traditional engineering problems such as process and equipment design, product characterization, performance evaluation, and stability tests are also included as an integral part of this approach.

A workflow consisting of experiments, modeling, and synthesis is presented for managing the impurity content in the product crystals of a crystallization process taking into consideration the entire train of crystallization and downstream processing steps. Experiments on solid–liquid equilibrium, impurity inclusion, washing, and deliquoring are designed in such a way that the experimental data or the model parameters derived from these data can be readily used for process design. Guidelines for experimental design and tradeoffs in process synthesis are discussed. The workflow is illustrated using the purification of Vitamin C (ascorbic acid) as a case study. © 2009 American Institute of Chemical Engineers AIChE J, 2010

A topically used Chinese herbal paste, namely, CDNR, was designed to facilitate fracture healing which is usually not addressed in general hospital care. From our in vitro studies, CDNR significantly inhibited the release of nitric oxide from RAW264.7 cells by 51 to 77%. This indicated its anti-inflammatory effect. CDNR also promoted the growth of bone cells by stimulating the proliferation of UMR106 cells up to 18%. It also increased the biomechanical strength of the healing bone in a drill-hole defect rat model by 16.5% significantly. This result revealed its in vivo efficacy on facilitation of bone healing. Furthermore, the detection of the chemical markers of CDNR in the skin and muscle of the treatment area demonstrated its transdermal properties. However, CDNR did not affect the bone turnover markers in serum of the rats. With its anti-inflammatory and bone formation properties, CDNR is found effective in promoting bone healing.