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• Systematic digital reaction route selection. • Reactive distillation. • Continuous filtration. This review paper presents some of the topics discussed at the 2018 ' Chemical process development trends ' seminar organized by the Swiss Process and Chemical Engineers Society in Basel, Switzerland. The first subject covers the use of computer aided tools for systematic reaction route selection, the second one addresses the recent development in the field of process intensification with a focus on reactive distillation and dividing wall column technology, and the third topic highlights recent developments in the field of continuous filtration in the pharmaceutical industry. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract: This article investigates monitoring technologies, which provide systematic solutions for nucleation detection based on external bulk video imaging (BVI). The methods under investigation rely on multivariate image analysis, image feature descriptors and statistical control charts (SPCs). For the design of SPCs the video information is transformed into time series. The application of SPCs may be hindered by autocorrelated time series, which show oscillatory patterns due to light reflections from the stirrer blades; however, the autocorrelation can be reduced by performing operations with the first principal component (PC1) of the captured color image or by stacking the frames based on the dominating frequency. Another option is to design digital signal filters in the frequency domain to decrease the autocorrelation of the time series. It was found that the fastest methods for nucleation onset detection were the monitoring in the principal score space and control chart based monitoring of the mean gray intensity of the PC1 images sampled at 25Hz. Furthermore, it was observed that performing principal component analysis (PCA) calculations on multidimensional or multispectral information not only provides the combination of variables that explain most of the variance at a certain time instance but also decreases the autocorrelation of the resulting time series. For acoustic signal based monitoring the gray scale images were converted into a 2 channel stereo sound. It was found that this method has less performant nucleation onset detection capabilities compared to the methods which rely directly on the images. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Abstract: The purpose of the paper is twofold: it describes the proof of concept of the newly introduced bulk video imaging (BVI) method and it presents the comparison with existing process analytical technologies (PAT) such as focused beam reflectance measurement (FBRM) and ultra-violet visible (UV/vis) spectroscopy. While the latter two sample the system in small volumes closely to the probe, the BVI approach monitors the entire or large parts of the crystallizer volume. The BVI method is proposed as a complementary noninvasive PAT tool and it is shown that it is able to detect the boundaries of the metastable zone with comparable or better performance than the FBRM and UV/vis probes. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Abstract: This article presents the modeling and optimization of an industrial batch reactor operation with regard to production safety constraint which is represented by the reactor content swelling. Swelling occurs due to the evacuation of a coupled product which passes through the liquid in order to reach the reaction mass surface. In order to model the reaction system a chemical model linked to a hydrodynamic model is developed. The goal of the optimization is to calculate the temperature and pressure profiles which maximize conversion rates, without exceeding the maximum reactor level. The optimal temperature profile is calculated using the optimal control optimization method and the results show that a productivity increase of up to 36% can be achieved as compared to the industrial process. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]