Scalable Reactor Design for Pharmaceuticals and Fine Chemicals Production. 1: Potential Scale-up Obstacles

A comprehensive review of factors that inhibit scalability of fine chemicals and pharmaceuticals, from the chemical engineering point of view, is presented. These potential scale-up obstacles are generated by the fact that chemical rate constants are scale-independent, whereas physical parameters and phenomena are not. The paper identifies the most common factors that interact with chemistry to cause a fall in performance on scale-up and suggests ways in which these issues can be analysed in order to generate appropriate solutions. A hierarchy of the importance of the potential scale-up obstacles as perceived in industry is presented based on information collected from chemical companies, while the merits of scale-out as opposed to scale-up are addressed.