Chemical Process Engineering for Fine Chemical Processes and Plants
The Mixing and Fine Chemicals Department at IMM develops components and plants for the chemical industry. We optimize the production processes of our clients with innovative concepts for continuous processing in micro reactors with regard to
- sustainability and energy efficiency
- improved heat and mass transfer
- elimination of unwanted side reactions
- increase of operational throughput
- optimization of product quality.
Micro structured components are the key to efficient processes
Our core competence is the development and realization of micro structured components for chemical plants e.g. heat exchangers, micro mixers or micro reactors. With outer dimensions from fist to shoebox-size they are suitable for the
- laboratory range (e.g. 1 l/h for single-phase liquid flows)
- pilot range (e.g. 100 l/h)
- production scale (1000 l/h and more).
Major application areas are fine chemicals and specialty chemistry
IMM technology is mainly used in fine and specialty chemistry. But also pharmaceutics and consumer goods as well as bulk and petro chemistry are areas of application.
Recent fields of research are as well the production of emulsions, smart and functional materials (such as pigments or dyes), encapsulated agents or OLED materials.
Novel Process Windows
Using the Novel Process Windows approach chemical processes are tailored to ideally match the very high heat and mass transfer capacities of the micro structured reactors, while coping with the given short residence time (maximizing the throughput). This includes inter alia:
- processing at high pressures and high temperatures
- processing of hazardous materials
- processing in the explosive regime
- reactions coupled via instable intermediates
Drivers for Novel Process Windows are cost and ecological efficiency advantages like shorter time-to-market, higher scale-up predictability, higher degree of plant modularity, less stringent legislation, and the option for easy plant demounting and transportation (Deibel, CHEManager 2, 2006).
Overview of our microstructured components for chemical process engineering
Find out more about our portfolio in the area of chemical processes and plants.
Contac: Dr. Patrick Löb, Head of Mixing and Fine Chemistry Department,
Phone: +49 6131/990 377
