110th Anniversary: The Missing Link Unearthed: Materials and Process Intensification

Abstract

For many years, process intensification has been seen and considered through the prism of equipment and methods. The current review paper adds a new perspective to it and examines the role of (advanced) materials in process intensification. The discussion is illustrated with numerous examples of various types of materials that have been shown to intensify chemical and catalytic reactions, mass transfer, heat transfer, and momentum transfer processes, respectively. The role of process intensification in manufacturing of new, advanced materials is also discussed. In view of the importance of materials for process intensification, an update of the classical approach to the field of PI is postulated.

Process intensification technologies for CO2 capture and conversion – a review

“…Even greater intensification levels can be realised by astutely combining synergies of equipment, materials and methods ( Fig. 5) [18], and by combining two or more technologies in a given process. Such combinations are able to utilise the specific advantages of each component, whilst aiming to supress any associated constraints of a particular aspect of the process.…”

Process intensification education contributes to sustainable development goals. Part 1

“…• Tutored projects may also be an option to help students properly understand PI concepts and apply them to more complex problems, while getting into higher cognitive levels: the time dedicated to tutored projects is also appropriate to help them becoming creative and to go beyond their current knowledge (Appendix 3.3 in Supplementary material). • A new and important link can also be established between PI and materials (Stankiewicz and Yan, 2019), since PI is not restricted to reactor sizing/design and activation modes only. Several intensification strategies are directly related to various aspects of materials properties: thermal conductivity for heat routing, hot spots control, tortuosity and porosity for catalytic applications, etc.…”

“…Traditional chemical engineering courses are based on unitoperation oriented topics, such as chemical reaction engineering, mass and heat transfer, polymer processing, particle technology, etc (Stankiewicz and Yan, 2019). PI education requires students to master those fundamental concepts as well as material-specific functions (e.g.…”

Anisotropic Au-ZnO photocatalyst for the visible-light expanded oxidation of n-hexane

“…Further research is still necessary to implement disruptive improvements that can pave the way for the regular use of solar light and/or low consumption artificial lights (i.e. Light-emitting diodes-LEDs, novel reactor configurations and so on) [9,10,[12][13][14][16][17][18][19][20][21][22][23][24][25]. In addition, it is also necessary to boost the development of novel photocatalytic materials that can overcome the inherent burdens of TiO2 and are able to take advantage of the full solar spectrum instead of the limited UV range attributed to TiO2 [26][27][28][29][30][31][32][33][34].…”