Ecological and Economic Assessment of Micro-/Milli-Continuous Campaign Manufacturing: The Case of Writing Ink

Abstract

Many products from the fine chemicals and pharmaceuticals industries are currently manufactured batch-wise in multi-product plants. However, this processing scheme suffers from severe drawbacks, such as a high specific energy demand, cleaning costs and high staff requirements. Transferring batch into continuous campaign productions may overcome these drawbacks. Using the case of writing ink, such a continuous manufacturing scheme was developed employing micro-and milli-structured components in order to intensify certain unit operations. In this paper, an ecological and economic assessment of both production concepts considering all lifecycle stages is presented. The aim of our work is to highlight the advantages and disadvantages of the two multi-product plants and to derive recommendations for the most efficient design and operation of a continuous campaign manufacturing plant. The results show that lower environmental impacts are related to continuous processing, which is due to the option for energy integration in this case. Furthermore, in the economic assessment, continuous processing proved to be economically viable. In this case, reduced staff requirements based on a highly automated manufacturing plant are the key to lower personnel costs. In general, the results emphasize the importance of such micro-/milli-continuous multi-product plants for the future manufacturing of newly developed products in the mentioned industries.

Estimation of Efficiency Potentials Generated by Innovative Equipment Technologies

“…For example, Foeste et al and Rodrigo et al investigated cleaning technologies in the food and pharmaceutical industries. Other examples are case studies with focus on the transfer from batch to continuous production mode as presented, e.g., by Kralisch and Kreisel and Ott et al for chemical reaction technologies or Paschetag et al and Grundemann and Scholl for production technologies in the field of paints and coating.…”

Special Issue: Design and Engineering of Microreactor and Smart-Scaled Flow Processes

“…Grundemann and Scholl have conducted an environmental and economic evaluation of both batch and continuous operating modes for producing writing ink [6]. The analysis results showed clear advantages of the micro-continuous process over the respective batch operation in terms of improved energy efficiency, lower environmental impact and costs associated with human resources.…”